Dwight D. Eisenhower: The Chance for Peace

While serving as President Eisenhower repeatedly warned us of the perils of militarism.  The U.S.'s military spending is more than the rest of the world combined.  The spreading of weapons of mass destruction across the face of the planet is lead by us, the profit motive is enormous and it's our tax dollars that are funding this.  We now have 830 military bases spread around the planet.  The price we pay for all of this is dear, and one must ask themselves for what purpose.

The following is an excerpt from Eisenhower's 1953 speech "The Chance for Peace"

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 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. 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. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

Read the entire speech here: Dwight D. Eisenhower: The Chance for Peace