Read the Speech, Mr. President, Don't Just Quote From It!

During his December 1, 2009 speech to West Point President Obama quoted from President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Farewell Address of January 17, 1961,

I'm mindful of the words of President Eisenhower, who -- in discussing our national security -- said, "Each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs."

Over the past several years, we have lost that balance.  We've failed to appreciate the connection between our national security and our economy.

With all due respect, Mr. President, it is frankly ironic that you would choose this speech.  If you did read and understand this speech you would understand that it is a frank warning against everything you have done and proposed to date. (I have previously written about the Eisenhower speech while discussing the scientific-technological elite and global warming).

A few examples:



Take over of the nations health care:

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defenses; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

Cap and Trade/Climategate:

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present -- and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. 

Bailouts/Takeovers/Nationalization :

But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs, balance between the private and the public economy, balance between the cost and hoped for advantages, balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable, balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual, balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future.

Stimulus/Economic/Resources :

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

Foreign Policy/Honduras:

America is today the strongest, the most influential, and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches, and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace, to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity, and integrity among peoples and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension, or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt, both at home and abroad.

War on Terror/Long Term Conflict:

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insiduous [insidious] in method. Unhappily, the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.

It really is a fascinating prescient speech, take a couple minutes and read the entire thing.

DKK 

 

'An Army Of Davids' or Just A Different Gated Community?

The blogosphere has no doubt improved information gathering and dissemination, including many stories not covered by the traditional media -- so much so that popular bloggers have taken to calling it an, "Army of Davids," based on popular blogger Glen Reynolds of Instapundit's book of the same name.

Is that still true?

As a disabled blogger who doesn't have the stamina to blog daily (though I have repeatedly tried) or even the ability to consistently formulate proper sentences (and sometimes even difficulty in spelling and word finding, due to the cognitive part of my illness) coming up with an idea and putting it in pixels can be taxing with some even simple posts taking hours to write, however it is often quite worth it as you see a good idea right there on the internet.

However that same excitement can turn quickly to disappointment when you see that same idea, often times in nearly the same form being linked by the big blogs -- despite your attempts at getting it noticed when you wrote it.

For example:

Yesterday Instapundit linked to Bill Whittle of Eject Eject Eject with the tagline:

BILL WHITTLE ON CLIMATEGATE: A warning from President Eisenhower.

Posted at by Glenn Reynolds at 10:23 am (December 2, 2009)

Here is Bill's piece:

Hat tip to Michael Moore for reminding me about President Eisenhower’s famous “Beware the Military-Industrial Complex” speech, in which the Liberal Icon and Pacifist Saint Dwight David Eisenhower had this to say:

“…the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
(Emphasis mine – BW)

I wonder if this admonition from Eisenhower – uttered a few moments after he warned of the influence of the Military-Industrial complex — will be repeated among the Left with the same grave sense of somber warning as his previous few sentences?
December 1, 2009 11:46am

Strange thing is that if you Google scientific-technological elite the very first hit you get (as of the time of this posting) this piece I wrote almost a year ago and updated when the climategate issue came to light:

UPDATE: November 27, 2009 --  With the release of the University of East Anglia's emails this month and the beginning of the discovery of "climategate" this message has never been more important!

Everybody remembers Eisenhower’s warning about the, “military-industrial complex,” shoot, it has become the siren call of some.

(Google video search. "Eisenhower's Farewell." 53 most 2 minutes or less of a 46 minute speech one of the full speech. Reagan's, "Tear Down This Wall," gets less then half at 26, JFK's inaugural, "Ask Not...," gets 7, and FDR's, "Pearl Harbor," gets 3 (and one is from Crooksandliars ripping Condi for a comment she made))

Few if any recall — and it is never repeated — the second of the two specific warning he made in that very same speech:

“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.” (emphasis added)

The scientific-technological elite, Eisenhower truly was prescient. Read the speech, it could have been written today.
DKK

More interesting are the exact same comment I made on numerous blogs during the past two and a half weeks, including the #3 commetn at  Pajama Media's Exclusive Vincent Gray on Climategate: ‘There Was Proof of Fraud All Along’ (PJM Exclusive), which read:

“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded.
“Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.” (emphasis and changes added)

Every Liberal remembers Eisenhower warning against the, “military-industrial complex” but few if any know his second stated warming in that same farewell message, his warning against the, “scientific-technological elite“!
This speech could have been made last week, read the whole thing.
David
Nov 27, 2009 - 5:43 am

Now I am NOT, no way, no how accusing Bill Whittle of anything -- people can come up with the same ideas.  However I did send this story to Instapundit (another Pajamas Media Blogger and other blogs nearly 2 years ago and once again when the climategate issue broke last month with nary a reply, not to mention posting that comment on untold number of blogs.

Which leads me to wonder if the 'new media' is still an, "Army of Davids," or if it has become just another elite gated community where those not on the list aren't recognized? 

Another example:

May 8, 2009 at 2:27 am I wrote:

I trust the American people to understand that it is not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but to our enemies, like Roosevelt did, and Kennedy did, and Truman did.

Obama's supporters are too young to know any of this, but Roosevelt led the United States in the war against Hitler; the Allied policy was unconditional surrender, so there was very little for Roosevelt and Hitler to discuss, and in fact, the two did not meet at all (but they did exchange correspondence before the war).
So my guess is that Obama is thinking of the Yalta Conference with Churchill and Stalin as talking to "our enemies", although of course we were still allied with the Soviet Union against Germany and Japan at that point. Beyond that, is the Yalta Conference something Obama and his advisers view as a success worthy of emulation?
(Just One Minute -- Don't Know Much About History...)

Yalta was considered a diplomatic disaster that enslaved millions in Eastern Europe. Roosevelt, who called Stalin, "Uncle Joe," failed to recognize the evil that would lead to the deaths of 15 to 20 million Soviet citizens -- Time Magazine (13 April 1998) (Some estimates as large as 52 million with 30 million being the median estimate).

I can't recall when Truman talked to our enemies, other then perhaps their surrender after he dropped the atomic bomb . Truman lead the UN into Korea and did so without talking to our enemies -- they were boycotting the UN -- rather then talk he gave ultimatums and took action to remove our enemies from South Korea.

As a matter of fact Truman has his own Doctrine (The Truman Doctrine) that supported our allies financially and militarily against Soviet (our enemies) influence. This lead to what was known as the Domino Theory and formed much of the Cold War doctrine that lasted for decades (a variation of which Bush uses to push democracy).

Along with The Marshall Plan The Truman Doctrine helped feed the Soviet reaction that led to the Berlin Blockade. It was only the show of determination and strength -- redeployment of B-29's to England, the same bombers that dropped atomic weapons on Japan -- that prevented escalation of the conflict during the 11 months of the airlift.

Kennedy escalated Vietnam as a part of Truman's doctrine and while he did speak to Kruschev during the Vienna Summit it was considered a failure that caused the players (Kennedy and Kruschev) to push the world toward the most dangerous nuclear stand off in history -- The Cuban missile Crisis.

(About Vienna, Kennedy later claimed of Khrushchev, "He beat the hell out of me.")

If this is what Obama has in mind, getting the hell beat out of him by Kim and Mahmoud I don't want anything to do with it! I should just start digging the shelter now!
DKK

After posting that in the comments of popular blogs and forwarding to many including Instapundit the next day Jack Kelly at RCP posted this:

May 09, 2008

Obama Needs a History Lesson

By Jack Kelly
In his victory speech after the North Carolina primary, Sen. Barack Obama said something that is all the more remarkable for how little it has been remarked upon.
In defending his stated intent to meet with America's enemies without preconditions, Sen. Obama said: "I trust the American people to understand that it is not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but to our enemies, like Roosevelt did, and Kennedy did, and Truman did."
That he made this statement, and that it passed without comment by the journalists covering his speech indicates either breathtaking ignorance of history on the part of both, or deceit.
I assume the Roosevelt to whom Sen. Obama referred is Franklin D. Roosevelt. Our enemies in World War II were Nazi Germany, headed by Adolf Hitler; fascist Italy, headed by Benito Mussolini, and militarist Japan, headed by Hideki Tojo. FDR talked directly with none of them before the outbreak of hostilities, and his policy once war began was unconditional surrender.
FDR died before victory was achieved, and was succeeded by Harry Truman. Truman did not modify the policy of unconditional surrender. He ended that war not with negotiation, but with the atomic bomb.
Harry Truman also was president when North Korea invaded South Korea in June, 1950. President Truman's response was not to call up North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung for a chat. It was to send troops.
Perhaps Sen. Obama is thinking of the meeting FDR and Churchill had with Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in Tehran in December, 1943, and the meetings Truman and Roosevelt had with Stalin at Yalta and Potsdam in February and July, 1945. But Stalin was then a U.S. ally, though one of whom we should have been more wary than FDR and Truman were. Few historians think the agreements reached at Yalta and Potsdam, which in effect consigned Eastern Europe to slavery, are diplomatic models we ought to follow. Even fewer Eastern Europeans think so.
When Stalin's designs became unmistakably clear, President Truman's response wasn't to seek a summit meeting. He sent military aid to Greece, ordered the Berlin airlift and the Marshall Plan, and sent troops to South Korea.
Sen. Obama is on both sounder and softer ground with regard to John F. Kennedy. The new president held a summit meeting with Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev in Vienna in June, 1961.
Elie Abel, who wrote a history of the Cuban missile crisis (The Missiles of October), said the crisis had its genesis in that summit.
"There is reason to believe that Khrushchev took Kennedy's measure in June 1961 and decided this was a young man who would shrink from hard decisions," Mr. Abel wrote. "There is no evidence to support the belief that Khrushchev ever questioned America's power. He questioned only the president's readiness to use it. As he once told Robert Frost, he came to believe that Americans are 'too liberal to fight.'"
That view was supported by New York Times columnist James Reston, who traveled to Vienna with President Kennedy: "Khrushchev had studied the events of the Bay of Pigs," Mr. Reston wrote. "He would have understood if Kennedy had left Castro alone or destroyed him, but when Kennedy was rash enough to strike at Cuba but not bold enough to finish the job, Khrushchev decided he was dealing with an inexperienced young leader who could be intimidated and blackmailed."
It's worth noting that Kennedy then was vastly more experienced than Sen. Obama is now. A combat veteran of World War II, Jack Kennedy served 14 years in Congress before becoming president. Sen. Obama has no military and little work experience, and has been in Congress for less than four years.
The closest historical analogue to Sen. Obama's expressed desire to meet with no preconditions with anti-American dictators such as Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the trip British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French premier Eduoard Daladier took to Munich in September of 1938 to negotiate "peace in our time" with Adolf Hitler. That didn't work out so well.
History is an elective few liberals choose to take these days, noted a poster on the Web log "Hot Air." The lack of historical knowledge among journalists is merely appalling. But in a presidential candidate it's dangerous. As Sir Winston Churchill said:
"Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

Jack's is better written then mine, but even in my often confused state I hit all the points he did and I did it a day earlier.  His got picked up by the same blogs I sent mine to more then a day earlier and mine was ignored.

My point is this question, can a non journalist nobody with a cognitive disability still break through the gates or is the "Army of Davids" limited to those in the new gated community?  Because if I can't, then is it still citizen journalism?
DKK