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This morning, a missile that Russia fired at Ukraine flew over Moldova and came within 22 miles of Romania, which is a member of NATO. If the missile had hit Romania, there would have been immediate demands under NATO’s Article 5, especially within the Ukrainian leadership, for NATO to respond immediately by attacking Russia.
It’s also worth noting that NATO wants to make Moldova a member of NATO, which would bring the total number of countries that the American people are automatically required to defend to 31.
As the Pentagon gets the American people ever-closer to all-out, life-destroying nuclear war with Russia, one cannot help but be reminded of the warning that President Eisenhower issued to the American people about America’s deep state.
In his Farewell Address, Ike stated:
Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.
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. 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.
Ike wasn’t some leftist peacenik. He was a West Point graduate. He was a former military general — a five-star general to be exact. In fact, he was the supreme allied commander in World War II. He had a deep understanding of the military establishment.
Ike delivered his speech during America’s Cold War with Russia and the rest of the communist world. Thus, when Ike stated, “We recognize the imperative need for this development,” he was pointing out that the Cold War required the massive rise of the American deep state.
I question that justification. I hold that the greatest mistake America ever made was to convert the federal government from our founding system of a limited-government republic to a national-security state, which wields many of the same totalitarian-like powers that communist and totalitarian regimes wield, including the power of state-sponsored assassinations. A free nation fights communism with freedom, not with totalitarianism and dark-side deep-state powers.
Regardless, it is indisputable that the Cold War ostensibly ended in 1989. Therefore, Ike’s justification for a deep state evaporated in that year. All that was left was his warning of the dangers to our way of life posed by this gigantic, permanent military-intelligence establishment in our midst — an establishment that has now gotten us perilously close to nuclear war, just as it did in the run-up to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
This would be a good time for the American people to do some serious thinking and reflection on Ike’s warning to us and to ponder a different direction for our nation — one toward the restoration of America’s founding system of a limited-government republic and the restoration of America’s founding foreign policy of non-interventionism.
There is no question but that the Pentagon is moving America in the highly dangerous and destructive direction about which Ike warned us. Let’s just hope that the Pentagon doesn’t make the matter moot by succeeding in bringing about an all-out, life-destroying nuclear war before Americans have the opportunity to change the direction of our country.
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Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.
