Robert Reich just posted a great quote from Eisenhower on Bluesky

[highplainsdem]

On X, too, but I'm posting the Bluesky copy:

"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."

-Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953

— Robert Reich (@rbreich.bsky.social) 2026-01-10T19:00:08.716130Z

That's from Eisenhower's Chance for Peace speech, also known as the Cross of Iron speech.

Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chance_for_Peace_speech

A longer quote, from that article:

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 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 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.

[Enter stage left]

1. IMHO, Ike was the very last decent Republican president.

The very last one!

[SheltieLover]

2. Absolutely!

[MIButterfly]

5. That's what my mother always said; the last good Republican was Eisenhower.

Can you imagine how badly he would be vilified by his party members today?

It boggles the mind how low the Republican party has sunk in 70 years.

[Codifer]

6. In present politics

Ike would be a radical lefty.

[evolves]

10. And the last Republican legitimately

elected....

[lastlib]

15. ...except that he had Nixon for a VP.......

...twice. I call that two strikes against him.

[Intractable]

20. Nixon was corruptus maximus, but he wasn't trying to kill us.

[lastlib]

22. Yeah, I guess.....

...I'd have to give the basturd that.......

[Intractable]

23. Nixon, and other Republicans of the time, understood that if the parasite kills the host, no more Republicans ...

err, oops, I meant to say "parasite."

[lastlib]

24. I see what you did there!

- - -

[SheltieLover]

3. I think of this every damned day!

Ty for sharing!

[markodochartaigh]

4. The fact is,

with the dollar as reserve currency it didn't even have to be this way. Witness the HUGE tax cuts while we keep on with our HUGE military spending.

The US spends so heavily on the military as a form of control of those outside the US.

The US spends so little on social safety net programs in the US as a form of control of those inside the US.

Money, the spending of it or the lack of spending of it, is about survival for the poor, about comfort for the middle class, and about control for the 1%.

[multigraincracker]

7. I like Ike.

[Skittles]

8. it's not just that

imagine the diseases that would have been cured by now if the money spent on senseless wars was spent on medical research

[Botany]

9. I have another very good person and a Republican too. Gov. Ray Shafer of PA.. One of the finest men I ....

… have ever met. His brother who was the Crawford County, D.A. and lived next door in a
middle class neighborhood and we saw Ray all the time. His kind is long gone. For some
reason the Governor liked to talk to me when I was fishing a couple of times.

BTW a must see movie on Eisenhower is, Ike Countdown to D-Day. Watch what Ike did to one
of his generals when he pulled a Pete Hegseth and talked about classified information about
D-Day. Also the actor who played Winston Churchill did a wonderful job in the film.

[flashman13]

11. Trump says a $1T military budget isn't enough. According to him the Amerikan people now demand $1.5 T. Obscene!

[MLWR]

13. For what he wants to do with the military, it probably isn't enough.

The guy who PROMISED no foreign entanglements is now talking about invading Cuba, Colombia, Panama, Greenland, Canada and bombing the crap out of Iran. He wants to use the military to secure the Venezuelan oil fields while he plunders them. All of that is expensive and if the past has anything to say about the future, he doesn't ever stay within budget.

[calimary]

16. I still can't quite believe that he got elected to a second term.

He wasn’t a bad enough in his first four years?

Too many people either don’t remember, or maybe just don’t WANT TO remember?

Was he just that skillful a liar and cheater by the time he wanted another four years?

Sure beats me…

[flashman13]

19. You forgot he's also planning to bomb the crap out of the Mexican cartels.

He can do Cuba and Mexico on the cheap because they are nearby. Of course Mexico can retaliate by sealing the border and shutting down the supply chain. Much of American industry would freeze up in less than a week.

And if you are an American in Mexico you had better get out now. The cartels won't hesitate to murder Americans wholesale. It could all get very out of hand very quickly.

I know I will get pooh poohed here, but is the military really going to go along with this bullshit?

[ShazamIam]

12. Remember this, it is not only conservatives who are gun owners. nt

[angrychair]

14. Esinhower was a scumbag

He was a red scare Christian extremist that put "god" on everything. Literally put "god" on money, about the most unchristian thing I think he could have done.
He is singlehandedly responsible for entrenching state sanctioned religion and setting the framework for the rise of Christian nationalism.

[Permanut]

17. The case of the Little Rock Nine argues otherwise..

So I disagree with your assessment.

[angrychair]

18. The Little Rock Nine is not relevant

To my point. There is significant evidence to show that he was a religious extremist, both in his words and changing our national motto, money and the pledge of Allegiance to favor Christianity over other religions or no religion at all.

Those things absolutely drove Christian nationalists perspective that America was "Christian" nation.

Sorry. He might have said and done things that were good but he poisoned this country against itself by favoring one religion over another.

[Permanut]

21. Point taken..

More relevant to your point, he presided in the Cold War era, when what he referred to as atheistic communism was seen as a serious threat.

Maybe that's why I'm more inclined to give him a pass.

[FadedMullet]

26. Angrychair - "Singlehandedly"??? Really?? We have less "state sanctioned religion" today than in 1950.

[Joinfortmill]

25. Last great Republican President