Free Republic

...The present Eisenhower Memorial design, by postmodernist Frank Gehry, has virtually nothing to do with the Dwight David Eisenhower of history. Plans call for Ike to be memorialized in sculpture as a barefoot farmboy on the Great Plains: not the great wartime leader; not the soldier-diplomat; not the chief executive of the United States who presided over eight years of peace and prosperity. The Gehry conceit seems both obvious and entirely in tune with the postmodern deconstruction of history: There are no great men; there are no great virtues; there is no great striving; nor is there great accomplishment or...

90 year olds marry after 40 years of friendshipUpdated: Dec 29, 2011 12:13 PM EST Charleston, SC (AP) - A 91-year-old newlywed says she expects to spend a dozen more years with her 92-year-old spouse following their wedding at a retirement home on James Island. According to media reports, Margaret McSpadden and retired Air Force Col. William Thomas married Wednesday at Bishop Gadsden. Thomas is a World War II veteran and was President Dwight Eisenhower's personal pilot. He celebrates his 92nd birthday Thursday. McSpadden owned an antique store in Charleston.

President Obama's slow ride down Gallup's daily presidential job approval index has finally passed below Jimmy Carter, earning Obama the worst job approval rating of any president at this stage of his term in modern political history. Since March, Obama's job approval rating has hovered above Carter's, considered among the 20th century's worst presidents, but today Obama's punctured Carter's dismal job approval line. On their comparison chart, Gallup put Obama's job approval rating at 43 percent compared to Carter's 51 percent.

Fifty-three years ago, when newly elected Dwight Eisenhower moved into the White House, America's southern frontier was as porous as a spaghetti sieve. As many as 3 million illegal migrants had walked and waded northward over a period of several years for jobs in California, Arizona, Texas, and points beyond. President Eisenhower cut off this illegal traffic. He did it quickly and decisively with only 1,075 United States Border Patrol agents – less than one-tenth of today's force. The operation is still highly praised among veterans of the Border Patrol. Although there is little to no record of this operation...

As Americans suffer through the economic crisis since the Great Depression, anger continues to build. Not the manufactured anger and protests that we see at the Occupy Wall Street protests but an anger in middle America, what Richard Nixon described as “the Silent Majority”. These are voters who in 2008 elected Barack Obama and believed in his promise of hope and change. In 2010, after feeling betrayed by the leftward direction of the Obama Administration , they voted Republican believing that a Republican House would rein in the Obama Administration. Their anger continues to build. It is an authentic anger...

In just four days last week, President Barack Obama’s administration increased the national debt by more in inflation-adjusted dollars than the administrations of Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower increased the national debt over the entire decade of the 1950s. At the start of business on Tuesday, Aug. 2, according to the Daily Treasury Statement, the national debt subject to the legal limit was $14.293975 trillion. Obama signed legislation that day lifting the limit by as much as $2.4 trillion—with an initial and immediate increase in the limit of $400 billion. By the close of business on Friday, Aug....

Something remarkable occurred in President Obama's press conference on Friday (July 15). It was so astonishing that I was not sure I had heard right, and had to wait until the press conference transcript was posted on the White House website to be sure. But there it is in the sixth paragraph. Here is the quote in full: Now, what that would require would be some shared sacrifice and a balanced approach that says we're going to make significant cuts in domestic spending. And I have already said I am willing to take down domestic spending to the lowest percentage...

"The Insolvent Phantom of Tomorrow" From Eisenhower's Farewell Address, January 17 1961 Often quoted as his warning about "the Military-Industrial Complex," Eisenhower's speech also includes other warnings. One concerns "the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite," which is now cited concerning the pervasive fraud surrounding global warming and other "scientific" boondoggles. Another passage concerns something of much more importance to our present moment: "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...

CAVE CREEK – Glen Fairclough, a reader from Salt Lake City, Utah, sent us an e-mail last week to express his gratitude for publishing the recent article regarding President Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate. And, while going through digital images online of his hometown newspaper, the Deseret News and Telegram, Fairclough forwarded us a United Press wire article from the Oct. 2, 1952 edition he thought we would find interesting. The article appeared on page 6A with a dateline of Sherman, Texas. It was headlined: “General’s birth certificate officially filed,” and stated, “A certificate recording Dwight Eisenhower’s birth in Denison on...

SALINA -Imagine you're the president of the United States, and your resume also includes job titles such as Supreme Allied Commander. You've got a friend/adviser and member of your White House inner circle who's looking for a private-sector job, and helping him out ought to be a cinch — except everyone you call says "No" because E. Frederick Morrow is black. "Eisenhower was tearful about it," said William Putzier, a senior at Salina Central High School. Putzier didn't learn that bit of history from a book in a history class. Rather, he learned it from reading President Dwight Eisenhower's own...

Sixty-five years ago this month, Gen. George S. Patton Jr., hero of World War II and an outspoken critic of the Soviets, was en route to a Sunday hunting trip, a day before permanently leaving Europe, when he was critically injured in a vehicle accident on a deserted two lane highway near Mannheim, Germany. A large US army truck that Patton’s driver later said was waiting for them, suddenly — and without signaling — abruptly turned into his limousine’s path, causing a head-on crash. Even though Patton had an aide with him and the driver of the truck had one...

The phrase that would emerge as the most enduring legacy of what became, arguably, the most famous farewell address since George Washington’s evolved over 20 months and was agreed to only a few days before it was delivered. The words, in a speech by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, were transformed from a warning against a “war-based industrial complex” into a “vast military-industrial complex” and finally into a more vanilla “military-industrial complex,” which seemed controversial enough without the qualifier. Documents released Friday by the National Archives shed new light on the genesis of the phrase in the televised address, which Eisenhower...

The snow had fallen in massive quantities the night before and the temperature had plummeted to single digits. And the man who had provided steady and unruffled guidance to the United States of America during a potentially turbulent time, likely found himself watching the weather every bit as much as his sense of duty drove him to keep an eye on the very world itself. He had a trip planned that day—one he had been looking forward to for a while. It was more than an excursion from one place to another; it was a journey from glory to glory....

On NOVEMBER 9, 1954, President Eisenhower addressed the National Conference on the Spiritual Foundation of American Democracy at the Sheraton-Carlton Hotel, Washington D.C.: "Now Dr. Lowry said something about my having certain convictions as to a God in Heaven and an Almighty power. Well, I don't think anyone needs a great deal of credit for believing in what seems to me to be obvious... This relationship between a spiritual faith...and our form of government is...so obvious that we should really not need to identify a man as unusual because he recognizes it." Eisenhower continued: "Our whole theory of government finally...

This is sample footage of the earliest surviving colour videotape recording which is the Dwight Eisenhower inaugural address to WRC-TV on 22nd May 1958. The first 15 minutes of this event was shot in B&W which you see the president arriving to the building and the news reporter giving details of the event, then about nearly 15 minutes in Robert Sarnoff hits the colour switch and on comes the colour. For the remaining 15 minutes Robert Sarnoff, Dwight Eisenhower and David Sarnoff speak about the station and the colour television technology while being recorded in living colour!!! The whole program...

It’s tempting to say that Ronald Reagan was the best U.S. president of the past century, and I’ve certainly demonstrated my man-crush on the Gipper. But there is some real competition. I had the pleasure yesterday of hearing Amity Shlaes of the Council on Foreign Relations make the case for Calvin Coolidge at the Mont Pelerin Society Meeting in Australia. I dug around online and found an article Amity wrote for Forbes that highlights some of the attributes of “Silent Cal” that she mentioned in her speech. As you can see, she makes a persuasive case. … the Coolidge style...

Conservative students opting out of campus battles in favor of national ones may want to refocus their efforts. To be sure, the local campaigns can be hazardous. Just ask Ruth Malhotra, who needed a police escort when she waged one at Georgia Tech. Nevertheless, they give students the opportunity to expound on that which they know best. Moreover, it gives them a chance to follow in a noble tradition, namely that of William F. Buckley, Jr. when at Yale. “For his valedictory in 1950 he convened a dinner to honor the retiring Yale president,” Rick Perlstein writes in Before The...

1962 the Soviets swapped a U.S. airman to the Americans in return for their spies, but they kept the pilot's plane. Here's what happened to it. By Joe Pappalardo It looks like Russia and the U.S. are negotiating the biggest spy swap since the Cold War ended, as accused and convicted spies in both nations are set to be bartered, and some being moved from prisons in America to Vienna in anticipation of a deal. The episode harkens to the 1960s, when spies were traded to maintain the brittle peace between nations. The most famous of these cases involved Francis...

Think about it. Back in the mid 1950s, President Eisenhower was faced with a mass influx of illegal aliens crossing over the Mexican border into the United States. People were complaining of the same thing back then like they are doing today. That the illegals were taking jobs for less pay compared to what the average American was making and that also they were dangerous to society. Ike proposed a plan and had one of his generals inpliment it. The plan was to round up and deport the illegals deep into Mexico by ships and once word got out that...

Eisenhower arrived in London with less than five months until D-day. That is one month less than I had as Finance Director of a private college to lead the management team in preparing the annual operating and capital budgets. His experience occurred in another world I can never adequately imagine. A popular historical portrayal describes General Dwight Eisenhower managing a political/military alliance, but reminds us he never lead troops in combat. However, his leadership sustained many unprecedented initiatives for successful Normandy landings. The air assault examples the frightful uncertainties of many critical hazards run on this “Day of Days”. The...