Eisenhower’s Cross of Iron Speech: Trade-offs for the Defense Budget

I recently watched the documentary Why we fight, and was struck by the prescience of President Eisenhower’s warning.  So many of our educational decisions are made because of the harsh economic realities of today.  How many of these are guns-for-butter choices might we have made differently if education was considered?  Here in Georgia, computer science curricular decisions are being made with a recognition that there will be little or no funding available for teacher professional development — certainly not enough for every high school CS teacher in the state.  What percentage of the DoD budget would it cost to provide professional learning opportunities to every CS teacher in the country?  It’s certainly in the single digits.

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 in 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 50 miles of concrete highway.

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, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

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.

via Cross of Iron Speech.