I Wanna Be Like Ike
This week’s #MondayMotivation
It’s not often that a Republican inspires me, but when they do, it’s usually Dwight Eisenhower. (Although Lincoln is definitely up there, too).
I thought of Eisenhower recently in response to a thread John Iadarola from The Damage Report and TYT started asking who we’d like to see the GOP run in the 2024 election. My reply was partly a joke, but also partly serious.
Eisenhower was a decorated general and a conservative, so he was not an “All You Need Is Love” activist by any means on all issues. But in his later days at least, he realized and spoke out against the folly and waste of war. This is just one of a few quotes I’ve read from him about this.
Our current political climate wouldn’t allow someone who speaks out against giving spending money on guns and warships, and giving that money to the poor, to get anywhere near the U.S. presidency. In fact, the Democratic Congress voted to give the Pentagon MORE than they requested in the last budget.
But would someone who said this have gotten to the presidency 200 years ago? Is this how most leaders thought 1,000 year ago? We’re at a dark period of our history, but we’ve made progress the past, and we can make progress again towards a world where prominent politicians call for reducing military spending, not raising it.
I think this quote would resonate with millions of Americans. We just need to find a way to get our voice to reach those in power, or to replace corrupt politicians who are putting the war machine above the needs of Americans.
Our political spectrum has gone so far to the right that many “Democrats” today would have been in the right wing of the GOP 30-40 years ago. Regaining our progress as a society won’t happen overnight, but if a conservative could once speak out against war and for ending poverty, I believe we can and will shift our country’s politics far enough left again where a Democratic president — and who knows, maybe even a Republican one some day — could strongly agree with the message in this quote again, and do something about it.
