1956 Ike on Small Nations and Powerful Nations

In a personal letter to Swede Hazlett, an old high school friend, Eisenhower gives out some of his personal ruminations on the tensions with Egypt over the Suez Canal, and then more generally on the need for America to be more generous with its foreign aid, despite how difficult it is to get Congress to agree, the problem of trying to achieve a healthy relationship between powerful nations and small nations, the need to realize a sense of equality among highly unequal parties.

_ _ _

“In the kind of world we are trying to establish,” [Eisenhower] said, “we frequently find ourselves victims of the tyrannies of the weak.” By committing to treat small and powerful nations equally, “we unavoidably give to the little nations opportunities to embarrass us greatly.” He went on to say that the opponents of foreign aid failed to realize that “isolation is no longer possible or desirable” and that it was in the interests of the United States to help smaller nations “make a living.” Ike recalled the fable teaching the moral that “the rich owner of a factory could not forever live on top of the hill in luxury and serenity, while all around him at the bottom of the hill his workmen lived in misery, privation and resentment.” Eisenhower concluded: “We must learn the same lesson internationally.”

-- David A. Nichols, “Eisenhower 1956”

1956 Ike on Small Nations and Powerful Nations

In a personal letter to Swede Hazlett, an old high school friend, Eisenhower gives out some of his personal ruminations on the tensions with Egypt over the Suez Canal, and then more generally on the need for America to be more generous with its foreign aid, despite how difficult it is to get Congress to agree, the problem of trying to achieve a healthy relationship between powerful nations and small nations, the need to realize a sense of equality among highly unequal parties.

_ _ _

“In the kind of world we are trying to establish,” [Eisenhower] said, “we frequently find ourselves victims of the tyrannies of the weak.” By committing to treat small and powerful nations equally, “we unavoidably give to the little nations opportunities to embarrass us greatly.” He went on to say that the opponents of foreign aid failed to realize that “isolation is no longer possible or desirable” and that it was in the interests of the United States to help smaller nations “make a living.” Ike recalled the fable teaching the moral that “the rich owner of a factory could not forever live on top of the hill in luxury and serenity, while all around him at the bottom of the hill his workmen lived in misery, privation and resentment.” Eisenhower concluded: “We must learn the same lesson internationally.”

-- David A. Nichols, “Eisenhower 1956”

Food Porn

Must be lunchtime. Because, right now, this looks better to me than a bikini babe.

Food Porn

Must be lunchtime. Because, right now, this looks better to me than a bikini babe.

Monk's News Reel

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- An asteroid bigger than an aircraft carrier will dart between the Earth and moon on Tuesday - the closest encounter by such a huge rock in 35 years.

But scientists say not to worry. It won't hit.

-- AP


Lindsay Lohan has been released from jail -- a mere 4.5 hours after she checked in.

-- ONTD


Let’s face it: a large part of our political class, including essentially the entire G.O.P., is deeply invested in an energy sector dominated by fossil fuels, and actively hostile to alternatives. This political class will do everything it can to ensure subsidies for the extraction and use of fossil fuels, directly with taxpayers’ money and indirectly by letting the industry off the hook for environmental costs, while ridiculing technologies like solar.

So what you need to know is that nothing you hear from these people is true. Fracking is not a dream come true; solar is now cost-effective. Here comes the sun, if we’re willing to let it in.

-- Paul Krugman at NYT


Democrats More Liberal, Less White Than in 2008

-- Gallup.com


While driving back from dinner, Cain said he would show her the restaurant association’s offices and parked down the block. Then, according to Bialek, he slid his hand “under my skirt and reached for my genitals. He also grabbed my head and brought it toward his crotch.”

When she protested, mentioning her boyfriend, Bialek says Cain replied: “You want a job, right?”

-- Howard Kurtz at The Daily Beast


“The boom in trading activity in individual stock portfolios; the spread of legalized gambling; the rise of drug and alcohol addiction—it is all of a piece.”

-- Michael Lewis


"I cannot bear Netanyahu, he's a liar," Sarkozy told Obama, unaware that the microphones in their meeting room had been switched on, enabling reporters in a separate location to listen in to a simultaneous translation.

"You're fed up with him, but I have to deal with him even more often than you," Obama replied, according to the French interpreter.

-- LJ/Reuters

Monk's News Reel

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- An asteroid bigger than an aircraft carrier will dart between the Earth and moon on Tuesday - the closest encounter by such a huge rock in 35 years.

But scientists say not to worry. It won't hit.

-- AP


Lindsay Lohan has been released from jail -- a mere 4.5 hours after she checked in.

-- ONTD


Let’s face it: a large part of our political class, including essentially the entire G.O.P., is deeply invested in an energy sector dominated by fossil fuels, and actively hostile to alternatives. This political class will do everything it can to ensure subsidies for the extraction and use of fossil fuels, directly with taxpayers’ money and indirectly by letting the industry off the hook for environmental costs, while ridiculing technologies like solar.

So what you need to know is that nothing you hear from these people is true. Fracking is not a dream come true; solar is now cost-effective. Here comes the sun, if we’re willing to let it in.

-- Paul Krugman at NYT


Democrats More Liberal, Less White Than in 2008

-- Gallup.com


While driving back from dinner, Cain said he would show her the restaurant association’s offices and parked down the block. Then, according to Bialek, he slid his hand “under my skirt and reached for my genitals. He also grabbed my head and brought it toward his crotch.”

When she protested, mentioning her boyfriend, Bialek says Cain replied: “You want a job, right?”

-- Howard Kurtz at The Daily Beast


“The boom in trading activity in individual stock portfolios; the spread of legalized gambling; the rise of drug and alcohol addiction—it is all of a piece.”

-- Michael Lewis


"I cannot bear Netanyahu, he's a liar," Sarkozy told Obama, unaware that the microphones in their meeting room had been switched on, enabling reporters in a separate location to listen in to a simultaneous translation.

"You're fed up with him, but I have to deal with him even more often than you," Obama replied, according to the French interpreter.

-- LJ/Reuters

To Be or Not To Be

“No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide.”

-- Cesare Pavese

A. Alvarez, in discussing attitudes on suicide in the modern era, at least up to the time of his publication, 1970, argues that while suicide was no longer regarded as a mortal sin or an abomination, it still tended to be explained away as an aberrant event, whether because of young love, a Romeo and Juliet kind of tragedy, or because of the seasonal blues, or even because of national culture.

I suppose that our own era has caught up to Alvarez, in that we now recognize it as a more universal condition. Although few of us commit suicide, it is a common thought, that we could put an end to this nightmare that is our existence. Such may be part of the condition of conscious, self-aware existence, that you have this sense of choice, to be or not to be, whatever dreams may or may not come.

To Be or Not To Be

“No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide.”

-- Cesare Pavese

A. Alvarez, in discussing attitudes on suicide in the modern era, at least up to the time of his publication, 1970, argues that while suicide was no longer regarded as a mortal sin or an abomination, it still tended to be explained away as an aberrant event, whether because of young love, a Romeo and Juliet kind of tragedy, or because of the seasonal blues, or even because of national culture.

I suppose that our own era has caught up to Alvarez, in that we now recognize it as a more universal condition. Although few of us commit suicide, it is a common thought, that we could put an end to this nightmare that is our existence. Such may be part of the condition of conscious, self-aware existence, that you have this sense of choice, to be or not to be, whatever dreams may or may not come.