Things have changed a lot since Eisenhower

President Trump’s budget proposal that would increase military spending by 35 percent while making drastic cuts in services to the poor and disadvantaged causes me to recall another Republican president from a different time and to reflect on how far America has shifted politically to the right.

Dwight Eisenhower, Allied supreme commander during World War II and Republican president, said in a speech on April 16, 1953: “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.”

The fact is Eisenhower was at the time considered middle-of-the-road politically, and he was essentially reflecting the view of the majority of Americans at the time, a view put into words by a Democratic president, Franklin Roosevelt, who said we were fighting World War II to achieve four freedoms, the fourth of which was Freedom from Want.

Another thing Ike, as we called him, said was that he would like to see every American covered in a health policy “like we had in the Army.” I personalty can attest to what this entails because I got free dental and medical treatment while I served in the Army. So you can see how we have shifted from a more humane view of an earlier time to a view that is essentially Social Darwinism, or “survival of the fittest,” and to hell with those who can’t make it on their own.

Can you blame some of us old-timers for being nostalgic about the political milieu of our youth?