Operation Wetback: How Eisenhower Solved Illegal Border Crossings from Mexico>
Posted on 02/08/2008 7:15:11 AM PST by meandog
I think Ike was good on national defense. He seemed to keep a close eye on the soviets.
Last comment: I think the 50s were socially conservative, something most here would value and I don't think Ike tried to fight against that.
I’m afraid this is 1 time where I’d have to diverge from George Washington’s thoughts.
Well, maybe not quite that, but basically to say it’s a moot point.
Life seems to prove time and again that there tend to be (just) 2 sides to every coin. The devil’s in the details and the other “parties” (as in Italy, I suppose) are just spins on the 2 sides. Essentially, people cannot help but gravitate to 1 side or the other. It seems having parties - particularly 2 prominent 1s - is natural.
George was right to warn against, but I’m afraid it’s just something that happens and really can’t be avoided. People tend to flock together to promulgate a common purpose.
There was indeed a need for science and engineering excellence after Sputnik was launched and Ike seemed completely caught off guard--I believe he was playing golf at the Augusta National in October of 1957 when the news came in. Also Ike was roundly criticized for his projects--the vision of an interstate highway system (modeled after the autobahns he saw in Germany). I was a kid then, but I distinctly remember relatives claiming it was an intrusion into state's rights to build their own roads and charge tolls (although we did have some U.S. highways, Rt. 66, for instance). Not wanting to antagonize Mr. K, he also did not lift a finger to help Hungary in its independence move against the Soviets ... and he did little more than referee the Suez Crisis, or manage (when he could help the French and quickly snuff it out) the growing threat of communism in S.E. Asia...to me he was acting in some of the finest liberal traditions; hardly what you'd call Reaganesque. In saying that, however, I still remember him as being a pretty good president.
Operation Wetback: How Eisenhower Solved Illegal Border Crossings from Mexico>
Can you post what Ike did concerning illegal immigration as compared to what McCainiac wants to do? As I recall, Ike assigned someone to use force and remove them from the United States.
It was Eisenhower appointees to the Federal courts in the Southern districts that broke Jim Crow. The Supreme Court cases were simply affirming the decisions of the lower courts. All of those Judges were threatened by the Klan and one even had a bomb tossed at his mother's house (they thought he lived there).
Read your mind. Check the post right before your’s.
You’ll have a hard time selling this to the Plutocrats on FR, they’ll just call him a socialist.
Sputnik was another 'event' that was way overblown. We and the Russians were both working toward putting something in orbit. The Russians looking for propaganda managed to orbit a 2 pound grapefruit sized radio transmitter that could only say beep, beep, beep. I remember listening to it as it passed over on my older brothers SW radio.
A few months later, (and after a few spectacular launch pad failures which the Russians would never show) we orbited Explorer I, a 30 pound payload that actually did something other than beep. It measured cosmic rays and confirmed the existence of the Van Allen belt. It built by the JPL and was way ahead of anything the Russians had.
The Soviets were into stunts and the media always loves stunts.
I suppose the media reaction drove Congress to take control away from the military (the Army and Navy both had their parallel programs then) and create NASA to coordinate space research and development. We can argue if that is a good or bad thing but in reality, there was no science gap. It was all knee jerk reaction.
The point I was trying to make was that they were all doing their duty. MacArthur, Ike and Patton were all soldiers acting under their CIC's orders.
So were the northern liberals who aided them in blocking cr and anti-lynching legislation from the 1920s to the 1950s. The liberal’s liberal Adlai Stevenson was less friendly to civil rights than Ike in 1956....that’s why King voted for Ike.
Right, IBY, See #30...and while Ike began Operation Wetback, I suppose you're aware who signed the first "amnesty bill" when they all came back...and we KNOW, McCain was no Reagan either!
Hun? Ike’s views on civil rights and the Military Industrial Complex owed more to Taft conservativism than they did to “liberalism.” Thus, the implication is that we should support Ron Paul. The prudent and level-headed Paul, rather than unstable and slightly mad Jack Ripper McCain, comes closest to the Taft, and even Eisenhower, Republican tradition.
Eleanor Roosevelt was among the most outspoken opponents of Jim Crow. You can’t get much more lib than that. Truman (lib) integrated the military and the media, as lib as it was even then, was against it.
Spot on, and so was the article. Historically, Republicans were not the conservative party. In the late fifties, early sixties, they had two wings, the Rockefeller wing and the Goldwater wing. The Goldwater wing could almost be considered the Goldwater feather. It was never a majority of the Republican party, and Reagan is still the only member of the Goldwater wing to actually be elected, although both Bushes ran more as Reaganites than Rockefellers.
John Kennedy, before his assassination, was hoping to run against Goldwater, whom he knew he would beat easily. He felt fortunate to have run against Nixon in 1960, because Nixon was a west coast Republican. He did not believe he could beat a Republican from the Rockefeller wing of the party, either in 1960 or 1964.
The conservative Republican was an offshoot of mainstream Republicanism, with Goldwater as the prophet and Reagan as the Messiah.
I'll agree with you on Truman but the desegregation of the military was almost entirely symbolic. Units were still defacto segregated until Ike who made it defacto. Also, as far as I know, no Northern Conservatives opposed the military integration. The primary opposition came from Southern conservatives AND Southern liberals.
You're not trying to make me laugh again... are you?.
Reagan Would Not Repeat Amnesty Mistake
By Ed Meese (Reagan AG)
"So here we are, 20 years later, having much the same debate and being offered much the same deal. ""What would President Reagan do? For one thing, he would not repeat the mistakes of the past, including those of his own administration. He knew that secure borders are vital, and would now insist on meeting that priority first. He would seek to strengthen the enforcement of existing immigration laws. He would employ new tools—like biometric technology for identification, and cameras, sensors and satellites to monitor the border—that make enforcement and verification less onerous and more effective."
Yes, I don’t believe that significant comparisons can be made for Presidents a half century ago and now. Time has changed everything and leaders must be assessed within the context of their own time and actions.
Eleanor Roosevelt Selling FDR's Japanese Relocation
Representatives of Councils greet Mrs. Roosevelt,
Gila River Relocation Center.
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