I really need to learn more about Dwight D. Eisenhower.  By all accounts, he was a remarkable man. Army General.  Supreme Allied Commander.  President of the United States.

Somehow, though, his words and warnings are lost on the present batch of politicians at a time when they should be most listened to.  For example:

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. … 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 8,000 people.

Beautiful in its simplicity.  That’s from Eisenhower’s “Chance for Peace” speech.  The numbers in the title of this post are the adjusted for 2013 numbers.  It is amazing what this country could do for the advancement of freedom if we just sacrificed a modicum of our security.