Post by Blair P. Houghton"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that
unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my
country. As a result of the war, corporations have been
enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will
follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor
to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of
the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands,
and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more
anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before,
even in the midst of war."
-Abraham Lincoln
By the end of the 1880s, corporatists had taken over the GOP
entirely.
--Blair
"Booth was working for Bush."
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the
militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties
or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an
alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the
huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful
methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As
we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government --
must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own
ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot
mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the
loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy
to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent
phantom of tomorrow.
We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have
their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity
shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may
experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will
understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are
insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges
of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the
earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live
together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect
and love.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960