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.
This world in arms is not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than thirty cities.
It is: two electric power plants, each serving a town of sixty thousand population.
It is: two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
It is: some fifty miles of concrete highway.
We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than eight thousand people.
This—I repeat—is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.
This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Eisenhower
Would be such a good speech over all of he didn’t spend the bit right before this blaming the mistrustful Soviets for not just like taking their word that “the free nations” 🙄 are not aggressive
Would be such a good speech over all of he didn’t spend the bit right before this blaming the mistrustful Soviets for not just like taking their word that “the free nations” 🙄 are not aggressive
This speech drives me particularly insane. It’s like if Hitler gave the speech from the Chaplin movie the Great Dictator right before Kristallnacht.
Yeah it’s fucked lol
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
It’s a great speech, but this fucker was a hypocrite. So that’s all it is imo, pretty words.
yeah, I know
I still appreciate this bit for the clear example of the opportunity costs of military bullshit though