Dwight D. Eisenhower

Eisenhower hated war.

Everybody hates war. Except Jihadis. Because they think it'll send them to heaven.

Had a particularly Progressive friend from college post something the other day, a quote she found interesting by Dwight D. Eisehnower, that went thus:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

Dwight had seen the fallout of war up close and personal.

But it is a false choice, Bread vs Bombs. You need both. Because a fat lot of good your bread and clothing are going to do you when someone comes to pillage them for their own and you do not have the means to deter or stop them. And I know darned well Dwight Eisenhower understood that. So I went and found some more quotes, and posted them in response.

"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."
Dwight D. Eisenhower

"We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. "
Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative."
Dwight D. Eisenhower

(ah, those sticky caveats - ed.)

"If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom."
Dwight D. Eisenhower

"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. " Dwight D. Eisenhower

"In the final choice a soldier's pack is not so heavy as a prisoner's chains."
Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Only strength can cooperate. Weakness can only beg."
Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Our real problem, then, is not our strength today; it is rather the vital necessity of action today to ensure our strength tomorrow. "
Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Pessimism never won any battle."
Dwight D. Eisenhower

"The free world must not prove itself worthy of its own past. "
Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Unlike presidential administrations, problems rarely have terminal dates. "
Dwight D. Eisenhower

"We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it."
Dwight D. Eisenhower

"We are tired of aristocratic explanations in Harvard words. "
Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Any man who wants to be president is either an egomaniac or crazy."
Dwight D. Eisenhower

I was less than surprised that she bit on

"The free world must not prove itself worthy of its own past."

But I already had a different take on that than the Progressive take on it: that America is inherently flawed and must be changed into something else of their desiring. That something else being a state where Progressives tell us what to do and what not to do, what to say and what not to say, where our talents would best be put to use, where we will practice them, and how much we will be paid for it. Ultimately that is where it must end up. Looking like Orwell's 1984. Maybe not tomorrow. But tomorrow will always be another progressive step toward it.

My take is this: We must not live down to our past mistakes. Nor must we continually flog ourselves for the ones we have overcome. Because if you really want to talk about past mistakes, the free world isn't going to take the bulk of the flogging. To talk about the mistakes of the free world outside of the larger context of human history is unfair as well as misleading.