We’ve all heard about Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warning to us about the “military industrial complex”. It’s practically iconic. But what I didn’t know was that same farewell speech contained a second warning, one that hints at our current situation with such figures as Dr. James Hansen. This is from the blog “Big Hollywood” It’s worth a read. – Anthony
Ike’s Not So Famous Second Warning
by Dwight Schultz “Big Hollywood blog”
On Saturday January 17, 2009, during the Fox 4 0′clock news hour, Shepard Smith recalled the anniversary of President Eisenhower’s famous 1961 farewell address to the nation, but he only mentioned one of Ike’s threat warnings, the one that reminded us to beware of the “Military Industrial Complex.” This warning came from a military man, so it’s been a turn of phrase that slobbers off the lips of suspicious lefty infants shortly after they’re forced to abandon the nipple and accept Marx.
So I shouted at Shepard, “What’s wrong with threat number two, you big beautiful blue eyed capitalist! What’s wrong with Fox News and your staff? There are only two warnings in that speech for God’s sake, if you’re going to honor a historical document maybe somebody could at least read it, and maybe for once in almost fifty years remind us of Ike’s second warning: “…that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.” Does anything come immediately to mind when you read that? Ike goes on, “…Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.” And, “The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.”
Do you think Ike was warning us that politicians like Al Gore and Barack Obama could cuddle with the scientific technological elite alike and, oh, I don’t know, maybe get behind Obama’s plan to tax your breath? Do you think that perhaps some time in the near future you might not be considered a person but a carbon footprint … does something like that sound ridiculous?
Have you seen how fast Obama has placed environmental academic hysterics and socialists in positions of real power? Steven Chu, John Holdren, Carol Browner and others are there to see to it that every exhaust in your life is a financial event favorable to the government. So how is it that one of Ike’s warnings became famous and the other a historical ghost note?
Above: Watch Ike’s farewell address in its entirety, 46 minutes
It’s really not hard to grasp. Our educational institutions monitor and control historical information and also educate and train the future guardians of public discourse — the indispensable journalists we read, see, and hear every day. By definition both the media and our nation’s scholars digest information and parcel it out in what should be an honest and thoughtful way. They digested Ike’s warning about the military and saw fit to warn us 10 billion times that the military is bad and needs to be feared and pushed off campus. They digested Ike’s warning about universities, scholars, federal money, science and policy, then gave it to Helen Thomas to scatter on some hot house tomatoes in the Nevada desert. It doesn’t get any simpler.
Think about this: How many times have you heard that the debate over anthropogenic global warming has ended? When and where was this debate? The mere recitation of the words, “the debate has ended” closed the discussion without you having ever heard it because, get it! It’s ended! Get It! Neat trick! Gore says the debate has ended….McCain says the debate has ended…Obama says the debate has ended …Hanson says the debate has ended, and no one in the media wants to ask, “What debate?” When? Where? Was there a scientific or political debate… or, God forbid, both, and who was for and who was against?
Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth,” has by now been proven to be almost a 100% big fat lie, and yet there is no media outcry against it or price for Gore to pay because he is supporting the scientific technological elite who want to hold public policy captive to the carbon tax that Socialists and Democrats have wanted since the 1992 Rio summit.
This is a clear example of years of liberal bias in protective favor of the university media structure. It just takes a lot of repetition and a strong ideological preference for saying: American military bad! American university good! CO2 bad! Tax our breath! Raise the tuition! Kick the Marines off campus! Long live man made global warming and the tax dollars we shall inherit from it. STING shall be our band and “Every Breath You Take” shall be our song … revenue streams for eternity.
Repeat after me this slogan … or, if you would rather stick this on the backside of your transportation vehicle , please do and remember, paying higher taxes is patriotic, so breathe baby, breathe for your country, just don’t breathe behind our back and not let us see you, ‘cause we’re talk’n money now, baby! The debate has ended!
…Hmmm?
Warning number two? What warning? Oh, you mean the military thing? We’ve taken care of that. Here’s Matt Damon’s number, he’ll tell you all about it. He went to Harvard you know. Remember, be upscale, don’t listen to Rush Limbaugh, breathe! And did I tell you to pay your taxes and act patriotic, especially when they’re going up?
Gotta run, I’m meeting Tom Daschle, Laurie David, Tyrano-Soros and secretary Geithner for lunch.
I’m probably way behind on these things, but there is an excellent debate on you-tube. JLF/Reese. John Christy and Wm. Schlesinger.
And now with the economic meltdown, who is going to provide the billions for such foolishness as AGW research.
Margaret Thatcher
“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
Yikes!
If you start getting more right-wing claptrap like this, you needn’t worry about any scientific discussion and analysis at this website. I was under the impression that the main purpose of this website was to verify data – especially data relating to climate and weather – and to subject broad conclusions to rigorous challenge outside of the peer-review context. That can and should be done without regard to a person’s political leanings – be they left, center, or right.
If this website devolves into the kind of name-calling seen in this post, then all of the nasty sobriquets applied by activists in the AGW community will have reason to stick.
I’ve worked on the interface of UK academia and the commercial world, where Govt intervenes to a greater and lesser extent in different regions.
My experience there says that the best ‘stimulators’ of regional wealth focus on enabling infrastructure, organisational initiatives and limiting the backing of technologies to arenas where respected commercial players invest side-by-side.
Yes they play within the rules laid down from the Centre. But they do so in a way which focuses on sustainable wealth creation, not box-ticking initiatives or continuous hand-outs for struggling concerns.
I think that the same will happen for ‘green technology’, however like in all these situations, many folks often focus on the negative rather than the positive……
More amd more I wonder whether your only two top-notch Presidents were Washington and Eisenhower.
Washington, yes.
Ike, no.
In fact a true account of history would note that while the USSR economy was bogged down by too much socialism it didn’t actually collapse until they completely abandoned socialism altogether and listened to American free-marketeers (mostly straight out of college). What the Russians didn’t realize was that the US economy was never truly a free-market economy – that’s a myth. The USA is actually very socialist indeed. The ideology therefore espoused by these US advisors had only ever existed in textbooks and it wasn’t the only or even the main reason the US became prosperous.
In fact no modern economy anywhere is free of socialism and nor did any economy grow without some degree of protectionism – China and Japan being the most recent glaring examples. What the Russian free-market experiment did however prove is that an unfettered market inevitably ends up being run by criminals. And an unbiased look at the US too shows us the most socialist parts of the USA are also the most economically successful. Life just isn’t as simple as we’d like it to be.
So if you’ re basing your ideas of what makes successful economy and what doesn’t, try to look at the real facts in the real world rather than the myths you attach yourself to through your social circle. And while you are at it, then think about why we are in such an economic mess now? Too much zeal for “the market knows best” dogma perhaps?
Real world experience seems to show that a little bit of socialism and a little bit of capitalism combined works best. Too much capitalism and you get over-exuberance for debt, takeover fever, rampant criminality and boom-bust cycles. Too much socialism and you get an army of petty bureaucrats putting down roadblocks to progress and people inevitably going hungry.
I find it hard to believe that there are no AGW doubters among the ranks of the American intelligence and military communities. I would think, for instance, that the Navy and the CIA must have their own scientists who know that AGW is not a legitimate concern. These people would be obligated, in good conscience and as good Americans, to tell our president what’s up — even if it meant some risk to their own favored status as advisers.
If Obama’s actions and words on climate change begin to disconnect broadly, I will presume that part of what happened behind the scenes was precisely this sharing of information.
I am not counting on it, though. Those of us who think that 30 years of cold, with Putin controlling important energy spigots to Europe, might not be a good thing will need to keep fighting the good fight for the foreseeable future.
John Egan (06:13:10) :
“Yikes!
***
If this website devolves into the kind of name-calling seen in this post, then all of the nasty sobriquets applied by activists in the AGW community will have reason to stick.”
The problem is, John, that lately it is getting increasingly difficult to separate the scientific from the political. What this post illustrates is the potential danger to both science and public policy when that happens. I do not believe that this website would be as needed or as popular if it weren’t for the intrusion of politics into science. To ignore political reality is to ignore the elephant in the laboratory.
Damning evidence, Lucy.
I hope this modest rant gets past the moderators. Forgive me – it’s early and I haven’t had my coffee yet. I haven’t written much about East Germany, and wanted to record this experience.
In July 1989, I went on a business trip through Checkpoint Charlie into East Germany during the last months of the Communist regime. The Berlin Wall fell later that year, on November 9.
Canadians had been fed the Big Lie by our socialist NDP Party leaders (and some of their Liberal Party fellow-travelers) that East Germany was the “Workers Paradise”.
Some paradise! Raw untreated sewage flowed into every river. Factories poured smoke into the sky and all sorts of pollutants into rivers and streams. Two-stroke Trabant automobiles spewed white oily smoke, so much that you could not see the car you were passing until you were beside it! Rail transportation systems were similarly backward. Industrial design in electrics and electronics had not progressed much past WW2 standards. Some old buildings still showed the scars of WW2. New buildings were covered with rivers of rust, probably since the steel re-bar was placed too close to the concrete surface. In every respect, East Germany was horrid.
Most importantly, East Germans lived in a constant state of real fear, lest the Stasi (secret police) find them in breach of something (or nothing) and destroy their lives.
What does this have to do with the topic at hand? Hopefully, not much. But there are disquieting parallels arising in my next-door neighbour, the USA.
Ike’s “Second Warning” is uncanny, especially in the context of the fraud of catastrophic humanmade global warming. The science is NOT settled. There has been NO debate, because the warmists have no case.
There is no evidence that CO2 significantly drives recent temperature. CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales. There is no evidence that the modest (natural) warming of recent years has been anything but beneficial. On the contrary, the possibility that Earth is entering a natural cooling cycle is much more threatening to humanity.
Nevertheless, the CO2 Abatement juggernaut rolls on, with easy lies like the “Mann hockey stick” quietly discarded and replaced by easy new falsehoods, like Antarctic warming.
Electrical energy generation is being severely compromised by false claims that wind power and corn ethanol will actually help – they won’t.
Reductions on American living standards and personal freedoms can be expected, all in the name of “global warming”. In fact, the world has not warmed for a decade, and global cooling is likely due to the recent phase shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). Paradoxically, we are completely unprepared for global cooling, since we are still obsessed with the myth of global warming.
As an aside, I hate the name “Department of Homeland Security”. Maybe it’s nothing, but it reminds me “Lebensraum”. That, coupled with officious young airport security men shouting at confused old people to “Take off your belt! Take off your shoes!” really puts me off at. If these officious little brats ever start goose-stepping around the airport, it would only make the picture complete.
Obviously, I dislike excess government authority, and the global warming hoax hands excessive power to those who really want to use it. It is ironic that these power-hungry little people, who want to run our lives, often cannot even manage their own personal affairs.
Good luck, my beloved America – you’re going to need it in the days ahead.
Charles:
Your reaction to the fellow that posted on “science” as a “religion” is really off base.
Please refer to Michael Critchion’s (sp) famous address to the San Fransico Commonwealth club of a few years ago, where he addresses “enviromentalism” as a “religion”.
Also consider the typical comment, “You don’t BELIEVE in Global Warming?” (Which I have received dozens of times.)
When I engage in “belief” it has to do with matters of “faith”. Reading, once again, another book on the “revolution” in physics between 1900 to 1930, I clearly find the “elements of religion” in the “old guard” who found concepts of “quanta” and “wave/particle duality” to be abhorent, because of their dedication to Maxwell’s equations, Newtonian mechanics, etc.
As OBSERVATIONS of repeatable phenomenon were made, and as the new “radical” theories fit, they were forced either to accept, or (in several cases) to get out of the debate by simply passing on.
Unfortunately, this tendancy towards “dogma” on the part of “elites” has not be eliminated from the human psych. It persists, probably always will persist.
Thus we will ALWAYS have the need for a little boy to stand up and say, “The KING has NO clothes on!”
Reply: I am familiar with the use by Crichton and others and I’m not stating an opinion on it one way or the other. As moderator, I take no stand on content of comments or posts, I only attempt to enforce decorum and attempt to maintain this a site as a place where issues are discussed, but posters are not verbally attacked on either side. The problem with the blind faith/religious meme is it is now the equivalent of screaming DENIER!. It is my job to keep this kind of antagonism to a minimum. When I have an opinion on subject matter I make it in a separate post under my username, jeez, aka ~ charles the moderator
I can’t help thinking about the GISS world temperature anomoly map, with it’s garish red Arctic ocean.
We all know, or should know, that it’s a work of fiction.
Now when the last vestige of the AGW fiction is poised to be proven conclusively and irrefutably wrong NICDC claims there is a malfunction in the ice monitoring machine. But it’s not noteworthy they tell us. Not even worth a blog post from you inactivists, they tell us.
As it turns out there is a newer more accurate ice monitor already up in space on duty, they tell us. But they don’t want to use it for continuity reasons, they tell us.
Less accuracy on long term changes! They tell us. SO what could be the problem with that? Except that is will show the long term trends, which were absolutely newsworthy despite being derived from the older inaccurate apparatus, used to launch a thousand thousand “Arctic is melting” climate change scare stories, to keep the political movement alive during a decade when every other world wide trend showed no global warming, when Antarctica has record ice growth, when snows fall in China, Saudi Arabia, Sydney Australia, Jerusalem Israel, Buenos Ares Argentina, when Alaskan glaciers, after a century of retreat change course and start advancing, when we only hear about these wonderful occurances through back channels and first person witness, rather then the news media.
No Rhys Jaggar. You are going to have to tell me something more then maybe the ‘green technology’ won’t be so bad. You are going to have to do better then imply my focus is somehow faulty, and that I should be looking more on the positive side as zero growth initiative liars and frauds take over this country. Drive it further and further into debt. Mortgaging a future generation while perversely advocating that these future generations would be better off never born.
It’s your vision that needs correction, not mine. Take off those rose glasses and see the reality.
Richard111 (01:38:34) :
“The average human (if there is such a thing) produces 894 grams of CO2 each day.
Put that figure into you calculators with each national population figure and multiply up by 265.25 to get the annual figure. Then, just for laughs, put in the future predicted population figures for say 2050.
We need to produce some very efficient carbon sinks pronto.”
It is than when people step away from the fear and start to “think” when the “hoax” becomes clear.
Did you know that a cyclist driving at top speed produces the same amount of CO2 as a car driving at a speed of 30 mph?
Is it clear to you that a Government that classifies CO2 as a poisonous gas in reality puts a rope around your neck?
Is it clear to you that the control of CO2 provides a Government with Absolute Control?
This is Ikes worst dream.
During the 1980s and 1990s, academic computer science literature was dominated by claims that the x86 CISC architecture was flawed, and that it would be replaced by RISC architecture. IBM, DEC, Compaq, Motorola, Sun, Apple, Silicon Graphics and others invested tens of billions of dollars in RISC technology. Yet RISC failed in the marketplace. All PCs and Macs being sold now use the academically flawed x86 architecture.
This disaster cost the founder of Compaq his job, destroyed DEC, cost Apple a decade of wasted time, etc. IBM has disappeared off the map as a PC manufacturer. Academics are absolutely necessary, but are often dead wrong.
John Egan,
Are you implying that “right wing” is believing in power to the individiaual and not to the state, free enterprise and not overly state regulated, property ownership and not feudalism, free speech and not censorship, unpoliticised science, and not state controlled science, etc.?
What wrong with that?
Or do you like having to get a permission slip from the kno-it-better government for every thing you want to do?
Think about the guy in Australia who disobeyed the government by cutting down trees to save his home.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/11/weve-lost-two-people-in-my-family-because-you-dickheads-wont-cut-trees-down/
Much as I like political discussions and elitist bashing, could we get back to weather related subjects?
Ron De Haan,
I’m an avid cyclist, and I do it primarily to keep my weight down – i.e. burn carbon calories.
Commuting on a bicycle can be dangerous. Drivers talking on cell phones cause many thousands of deaths every year. Orders of magnitude more civilians get killed by drivers than get killed by people with assault rifles. Hopefully the government will ban cars and phones in order to make the world safe again, like in Neanderthal times – when the climate was sooooo pleasant.
Rhys Jaggar (06:18:47) :
I’ve worked on the interface of UK academia and the commercial world, where Govt intervenes to a greater and lesser extent in different regions.
My experience there says that the best ’stimulators’ of regional wealth focus on enabling infrastructure, organisational initiatives and limiting the backing of technologies to arenas where respected commercial players invest side-by-side.
Yes they play within the rules laid down from the Centre. But they do so in a way which focuses on sustainable wealth creation, not box-ticking initiatives or continuous hand-outs for struggling concerns.
I think that the same will happen for ‘green technology’, however like in all these situations, many folks often focus on the negative rather than the positive……
Rhys Jaggar,
I agree that Governments primary task is to take care of infrastructure.
Government should do this in the most efficient way possible and leave decissions about technology and markets up to a free economy.
This is unfortunately not the case anymore.
We are now promoting windmills, a technology from the 16th century to “Green” the economy.
The Brits know what has happened to their energy bill.
I prefer some realism and let the market decide which technology wins based on the principle of competition instead of a Government dictate.
If we leave this path we will soon take a gigantic step back in time, ending up at the wrong side of the Iron Curtain where the favorite color was red.
Red is now Green.
“I find it hard to believe that there are no AGW doubters among the ranks of the American intelligence and military communities. I would think, for instance, that the Navy and the CIA must have their own scientists who know that AGW is not a legitimate concern.”
The US, UK and Australian militaries, at least, have run scenarios for possible conflicts arising from global warming.
This is not to say the militaries are ‘believers’ or ‘doubters’ – this is contingency planning for what is deemed to be a risk worth taking seriously.
If there were scientists ‘disbelieving’ of AGW theory working in the intelligence and military communities, their voices would be puny against the majority of scientists in those institutions who think differently. For all the brouhaha about consensus and petitions and whatnot, and whether or not you think consensus matters, there is one on AGW, and that is that it poses a real risk in to the modern world. Rightly or wrongly, that is a clear fact.
Once upon a time we’d just up stumps and follow the weather. Now the globe is locked by states and cities and the infrastructures (like agriculture/water resources) needed to sustain them. The military contingency planning mainly revolves around projected climatic changes that deplete those resources and the flow-on effects to surrounding populations.
I follow the science and the debate around it very closely. I would not describe the posts above or the top post as ‘skepticism’. Indeed, I was a skeptic long before I lit on to the AGW theory – it is a prerequisite for critical thinking. This thread is all speculation, politics and innuendo. Not a skerrick of science in it. Most AGW ‘skeptics’ give skepticism a bad name.
I used to follow this blog a bit when it was the science itself that was being questioned. I’ve visited less and less because it has drifted into politics – and now unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. There is still a mountain of science to get through. I’ll have to look elsewhere for useful criticism of that. I look forward to the (public) return of the inspection of US weather stations and the comparison to the NCDC and GISS temperature records, an intriguing and useful service to the debate. I’m not sure why it has been shut down. Don’t we complain about lack of transparency from the AGW crowd? Neither at climateaudit not here can I find a technical discussion the like of which went on at McIntyre’s site last year, updated regularly as station data came in. Photographs are superficial. Please, let’s see some data and analysis, and let’s see it in near real-time. Show the alarmists how it’s done.
Another NASA Defection to the Skeptics’ Camp
January 29th, 2009 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
Something about retirement apparently frees people up to say what they really believe. …
Charles the moderator-
I too find your admonition a bit odd given the writer’s questioning of motives in this opinion column. The column invites wild speculation. In my opinion, this doesn’t belong here given WUWT’s usual fact based argumentation.
Reply: Yes the column does invite this sort of thing and Mr Kaos wrote in policy generalities so I let the post through uncensored. In trying to enforce civil behavior, I have been discouraging the religious meme from being used for some time. This is a place where opposite sides of issues are supposed to be able to debate without flying accusations of blind faith. ~ charles the moderator
I am referring to a post by: Mr. Kaos (01:31:03) :
This disclaimer was added to the bottom of the post:
“Reply: OK, I’m gonna start getting serious about this. Enough with the religious meme of blind faith applied to the opposition, no matter what side you’re on. We are striving for civil discourse at this site. The only reason I did not heavily edit this comment is that it targeted generalities and not specific posters, but even that leeway is coming to an end. If I encounter this pejorative going forward, there will be censorship. ~ charles the moderator.”
I completely disagree with the disclaimer added by the editor. The original article is not about science, it is about policy, it is about governement action, it is about self interest, and the feeding at the public trough by so-called scientists, among other things.
The fact remains, people who do not have a belief system, or who do not have a goal that is noble, will fall for any idea whether it is relevent or not as long as it promotes their agenda. Watts Up reports on people who have agendas who use so-called science, and so-called consensus to drive their agenda. Exploring the underlying psychology that people use to manipilate for their own good is worth discussing.
Mr. Kaos’ points were very appropriate to this discussion and were not personal in any way.
markm
Reply: See my other two replies above. ~charles the moderator
I was not going to comment on this misframing of Eisenhower’s speech, but I regard it highly and do not like to see it abused, whether by bleeding-heart liberals who reference it every time the military does anything, or whether by belligerent, irrational conservatives who appropriate phrases out of context to whatever cause.
The blog author (Dwight Schultz) from which the top post excerpted, doesn’t enumerate the speech properly.
“So I shouted at Shepard, “What’s wrong with threat number two, you big beautiful blue eyed capitalist! What’s wrong with Fox News and your staff? There are only two warnings in that speech for God’s sake, if you’re going to honor a historical document maybe somebody could at least read it, and maybe for once in almost fifty years remind us of Ike’s second warning: “…that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
That is incorrect. The scientific-technological elite comment is part of the first threat – that of the military-industrial complex and associated institutions being powered by its own momentum instead of service to the nation – to liberty and democracy.
The second warning is this:
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.
If the blogger knew what he was talking about, he might have considered that the actual second warning sounds rather like the agonism of the global warming people.
Great Rant! and great responses. All the academics in the world aren’t as wise as the invisible hand that nurtures the profitable and culls those interesting but ill fated ideas that the world is full of. The problem is that we have a gigantic federal system that makes a habit of running around fertilizing the weeds. I especially enjoyed your use of the word “digest” and the image you create of Helen Thomas.
J Hansford: — “No GA… In a Democratic society that policy MUST be DISCUSSED by ALL. Not just determined by an ‘elite’. There are no “uninformed” in a democracy…. Otherwise you are fulfilling the scenario Eisenhower warned against.
It is easy to think people are fools GA…. America become the greatest country in the world, by letting it’s “fools” think. Something that was unimaginable in Europe.*”
Just so anyone else who reads what I wrote and comes away with the wrong impression like you did, I’m going to elaborate a bit.
If you had looked at the “*” and read the rest, I never once intimated that people were fools. What I said was that technologies are so complex that the avg person can’t make informed decisions. “Elite” merely describes the informed group of those who are. It’s not a backroom cabal of 10 people deciding policy. In terms of climate studies, this “elite” runs all the way from yes even Dr. Jim Hansen to Dr. Leif Svalgard and Lucia and Anthony and plenty of others, many of whom are just plain informed citizens and not professional climatologists. The key here is “informed.”
The average Joe and Jane on the street are busy raising families and their jobs and aren’t able to “vote” on some things because they know nothing about them (it would generally boil down to who’s more persuasive in print and on TV rather than who’s right.) This is even less effective as a way to make policy. Note that Joe and Jane aren’t stupid. They’re busy doing other things.
Interestingly the makeup of the legislative branch of the US government looks suspiciously close to what I just described. The average worker doesn’t have the time and expertise to have a say in every possible topic, hence we elect representatives whose job (at least in theory) is precisely to acquire the necessary information to be able to make informed decisions.
By working definition since the foundation of the USA, it’s clear that the opinion of the informed subgroup (a.k.a. what we call the technical elite in this case) takes precedence over the average individual by necessity. If this was a good enough arrangement for the founding fathers…