George,

Fifty years ago today, Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his famous "Military-Industrial Complex" speech, wherein he warned of the dangers of that link....seven years earlier he gave the speech quoted below. Is it possible to imagine any Republican of the current stripe uttering these words publicly?

"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 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. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed 8,000 people."

Harry Tenney (Electronic mail, January 21, 2011)