Sunday, January 20, 2013

Sunday Salute - XLIV

I remember when "Ike" was running for President in 1951 and he came through Ames on a train.  I think he may have been the only person who became President that I have ever seen in the flesh.  I have a great admiration for him.  The following is excerpted from the article in Wikipedia.

Dwight David "Ike"Eisenhower (October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was the 34th President of the United States from 1953 until 1961. He had previously been a five-star general in the United States Army during World War II and served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe; he had responsibility for planning and supervising the invasion of North Africa in Operation Torch in 1942–43 and the successful invasion of France and Germany in 1944–45 from the Western Front. In 1951, he became the first supreme commander of NATO.

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In recent surveys of historians, Eisenhower often is ranked in the top 10 among all U.S. Presidents.
On June 1, 1954, this signing ceremony changed Armistice Day to Veterans Day.
Historian John Lewis Gaddis has summarized the turnaround in evaluations by historians:
Historians long ago abandoned the view that Eisenhower’s was a failed presidency. He did, after all, end the Korean War without getting into any others. He stabilized, and did not escalate, the Soviet-American rivalry. He strengthened European alliances while withdrawing support from European colonialism. He rescued the Republican Party from isolationism and McCarthyism. He maintained prosperity, balanced the budget, promoted technological innovation, facilitated (if reluctantly) the civil rights movement and warned, in the most memorable farewell address since Washington’s, of a “military-industrial complex” that could endanger the nation’s liberties.
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Eisenhower founded People to People International in 1956, based on his belief that citizen interaction would promote cultural interaction and world peace. The program includes a student ambassador component which sends American youth on educational trips to other countries.
Eisenhower is remembered for his role in World War II, the creation of the Interstate Highway System and ending the Korean War.
Eisenhower Interstate System sign south of San Antonio, Texas

The Interstate Highway System is officially known as the 'Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways' in his honor. Commemorative signs reading "Eisenhower Interstate System" and bearing Eisenhower's permanent 5-star rank insignia were introduced in 1993 and are currently displayed throughout the Interstate System. Several highways are also named for him, including the Eisenhower Expressway(Interstate 290) near Chicago and the Eisenhower Tunnel on Interstate 70 west of Denver. 




Quotations - 

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.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
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.
Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.  
Plans are nothing; planning is everything.

There's no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.  

Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.  
I despise people who go to the gutter on either the right or the left and hurl rocks at those in the center.  

You don't lead by hitting people over the head - that's assault, not leadership.
This world of ours... must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.
An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.  

Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.
If men can develop weapons that are so terrifying as to make the thought of global war include almost a sentence for suicide, you would think that man's intelligence and his comprehension... would include also his ability to find a peaceful solution.  
In most communities it is illegal to cry "fire" in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aims?
I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.  
Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.
Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America.

Our forces saved the remnants of the Jewish people of Europe for a new life and a new hope in the reborn land of Israel. Along with all men of good will, I salute the young state and wish it well.



Previous Salutes
Maya Angelou


 Brad Pitt  
Bishop Desmond Tutu             
Betty White       

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