Was President Eisenhower Prescient on Global Warming Alarmists?

Michigan Capitol Confidential ^ | 12/8/2015 | Jack Spencer

[MichCapCon]

Former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower passed away in 1969, long before claims of man-made global warming came into vogue. Yet in his farewell address, his most enduring speech, Eisenhower warned of what he called a “scientific-technological elite” that might, through unwarranted influence, achieve a position of unassailable ascendancy within the U.S. government.

In that 1961 speech, he said:

“Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.”

“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. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

When Eisenhower penned this speech, his focus and concern was that the nation could be misled and public policy manipulated in the name of national defense by what he called “the military-industrial complex.” However, a closer look at what he was actually describing reveals a broader context.

Eisenhower was alerting the public to the danger that dogma could someday permeate and dominate their government. He envisioned the source for promoting this transcendent dogma as a scientific-technological elite, whose viewpoints and policy recommendations would become blindly accepted.

The clear implication behind Eisenhower’s words is that whether the motivation is sincerely held beliefs, cynical self-serving opportunism or both working in combination, the resulting impact of such pervasive and unchallenged dogma is bound to lead to the suppression of necessary debate. What he couldn’t possibly have foreseen was that within 50 years this dynamic could play out in the name of something called man-made global warming.

As we watch so many government officials and politicians passively submit to climate-crisis dogma, too fearful to challenge it, Eisenhower’s description of a scientific-technological elite wielding unwarranted influence over public policy seems clairvoyant. The degree to which policymakers uncritically follow the advice of this elite, as though its declarations were undeniable and its motives unimpeachable, shows that our 34th president profoundly understood the true nature of government.

[equaviator]

He wasn’t talking about NASA then but he could be now.

F—k Obamorroid, I like Ike!

[Fiji Hill]

Eisenhower warned of what he called a "scientific-technological elite" that might, through unwarranted influence, achieve a position of unassailable ascendancy within the U.S. government.

For better or for worse, President Eisenhower greatly facilitated the scientific elite's ascendancy within the US government by creating agencies such as NASA, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (now the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), and the President's Science Advisory Committee.

[who_would_fardels_bear]

Basically the premise of H. G. Wells's Things to Come, but what Eisenhower feared is what Wells was looking forward to.

[tanknetter]

Sort of.

The larger issue predates Ike, back to WWII, FDR and (among other things) the Manhattan Project.

There was a desire to continue government management (which could be read as control) of the nation’s main sciences endeavors. Which had produced things like the Atomic Bomb.

However FDR and his advisors knew that after the war the public wouldn’t tolerate the continued nationalization of the sciences, outside of a few national laboratories.

So they decided that the best way to keep the brain trust intact, and pointed in the “right” directions, was to have the sciences post-war devolved back out of direct wartime government control and back into the universities, but with a short leash provided via government grants and other funding mechanisms.

It was this larger issue that Ike was talking about.

[scooby321]

The more I learn about Ike the more I put him up there with Reagan.

He built the interstate system, he first integrated school, warned of the Military Industrial Elite. It just goes on and on

[BwanaNdege]

Congress has the responsibility to restrain all of these agencies.

Instead, Congress keeps bowing to the loudest ‘activist’ voices and funneling money to these agencies without restrictions.

Added to that, we have Administrations which pander to various groups.

[Albion Wilde]

The best, most foresightful and insightful president and competent lnational leader of the last century. People so totally underestimated him. The left trashed him. But they can’t stop his ideas from proving true.

[Ditto]

The degree to which policymakers uncritically follow the advice of this elite, as though its declarations were undeniable and its motives unimpeachable, shows that our 34th president profoundly understood the true nature of government.

Ike understood human nature just as well. He was one very smart man.

[Up Yours Marxists]

Eisenhower is easily in the top 5 for best leaders of this nation. I like this list:

TOP 5 Presidents:
5. John Adams
4. Theodore Roosevelt
3. Dwight D. Eisenhower
2. Thomas Jefferson
1. George Washington

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

He built the interstate system, he first integrated school, warned of the Military Industrial Elite. It just goes on and on . . .

The more I learn about Ike the more I put him up there with Reagan.

Ronald Reagan

• Got the country going again

• Whipped inflation

• Finessed the Energy Crisis, and

• Transcended Communism.

We wish he could have done better with his nominations of O’Connor and Kennedy to SCOTUS, but Eisenhower’s SCOTUS nominees were:

1. Earl Warren

2. John Marshall Harlan

3. William Brennan

4. Charles Evans Whittaker

5. Potter Stewart

Question:

Name the conservatives in that list (hint: there were “Impeach Earl Warren” signs all over the South. And William Brennan was a flaming liberal Democrat).

Eisenhower left office with serious political capital. Apparently nobody told him that no sitting POTUS since Andrew Jackson had seen his sitting VP win election, for he never invested any of his prestige in the election of Nixon in ’60. Consequently, he lived to see Kennedy call him to Camp David to give him a blessing from Ike for the sake of the country after the appalling Bay of Pigs fiasco. And also consequently, Nixon scandalized the media by running a “Southern Strategy” in 1968.

The fact that the negroes (as they were politely referred to at the time) voted Democrat in 1960, and ever after, despite signal help they received from Eisenhower led to Nixon writing off the black vote and choosing a VP from south of the Mason-Dixon line. After having named Henry Cabot Lodge, R, Mass (not a misprint) in ’60 . . .

Eisenhower thought the world of his Attorney General, Herbert Brownell. And if you study his career, you will see he would definitely fit the moniker “RINO” today.

Other than that, Eisenhower was a fine man. I was all for him, at the time.