President Dwight D's farewell speech. Eisenhower (1961)
Transcription
My fellow Americans:
In three days, for half a century, in the service of our country, I will be obliged to do my duties when the presidential authority is given to my successor in the traditional and solemn ceremony.
Tonight I come to you with a message of farewell and farewell and to share with you, my countrymen, a few final thoughts.
Like any other citizen, I wish the new president and everyone who works with him the best of luck. I pray that the years to come will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.
Our people expect their president and Congress to find a fundamental consensus on important issues whose wise solutions better shape the future of the nation.
My own relations with Congress, which began on a distant and uncertain basis when a Senate member once appointed me to West Point, have since turned to confidential during and immediately after the war and eventually connected to each other over the past eight years.
In this final relationship, Congress and the administration have worked well together on most fundamental issues to serve the national good and not merely party engagement, thus ensuring that the nation's affairs continue to move forward. So my official relationship with Congress ends with a sense of gratitude from me for having done so much together.
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We are now ten years after the mid-century, which witnessed four great wars between the great nations. Three of them were about our own country. Despite these holocaust, America is now the strongest, most powerful and most productive nation in the world. We are, of course, proud of this privilege, but we also realise that America's leadership and prestige depend not only on our unrivalled material progress, wealth and military strength, but also on how we use our power for the sake of world peace and human improvement.
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Throughout the entire American adventure in the free government, our fundamental objectives were to maintain peace, promote progress in human creation and strengthen freedom, dignity and integrity between people and between nations. To seek less would be unworthy of a free and faithful people. Any failure that could be traced to arrogance, our lack of understanding or willingness to sacrifice would cause us severe damage at home and abroad.
Progress towards these noble goals is constantly threatened by the conflict that is now engulfing the world. It devours all our attention, it devours our very being. We face hostile ideology - global by its scope, atheistic nature, inconsiderate of its goals and devious of its methods. Unfortunately, the danger it represents promises an unlimited duration. To successfully face it, it is not so much an emotional and fleeting sacrifice of the crisis that is needed, but rather those that will allow us to carry the burdens of a long and complex struggle with stability, certainty and without complaints - freedom is at stake. That is the only way we will remain, despite all the provocation, on our established path to lasting peace and human improvement.
The crises will continue to exist. In their solution, whether foreign or domestic, large or small, the temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become a miraculous solution to all the current difficulties. The huge increase in new elements of our defence; the development of unrealistic programmes to cure all diseases in agriculture; the dramatic expansion of basic and applied research - these and many other options, each in itself can be promising, can be proposed as the only way we want to go.
However, each proposal must be considered in the light of the broader aspect: the need to maintain a balance between national programmes and between them - the balance between private and public economies, the balance between cost and expected benefits, the balance between what is clearly necessary and what is conveniently desirable; the balance between our basic requirements as a nation and the obligations imposed by the nation on individuals; the balance between immediate action and national prosperity of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; its lack ultimately leads to imbalances and frustration.
The records of many decades prove that our people and their governments understood these truths in principle and responded well to them in the face of stress and threats. But threats are constantly arising, whether new species or degrees. I'll only mention two.
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Our military base is a vital element in maintaining peace. Our weapons must be powerful, ready to be immediately hit, so that no potential aggressor is tempted to risk their own destruction.
Our military organization today has little to do with the one that my predecessors knew in the time of peace, or even the warriors of World War II or Korea.
Until the last of our world conflicts, the United States had no weapons industry. American fork manufacturers could have built swords, as needed. But we cannot risk an emergency improvisation of national defence anymore; we have been forced to create a permanent weapons industry of huge proportions. That adds three and a half million men and women directly involved in the defence system. We spend more on military security than the net income of all United States corporations every year.
This combination of the vast military establishment and the great arms industry is new in American experience. The overall influence - economic, political, and even spiritual - is felt in every city, every state building, every federal government office. We recognise the urgent need for this development. Yet we must not stop understanding the serious consequences of this. Our work, resources and livelihood is involved; as is the very structure of our society.
In the government's councils, we must protect ourselves from obtaining unauthorized influence, whether sought after or not sought after, from the military-industrial complex. The potential for a disastrous rise in improperly placed power exists and will persist.
We must never allow the weight of this combination to jeopardise our freedoms or democratic processes. We shouldn't take anything for granted. Only a vigilant and informed citizen can force the proper link between the huge industrial and military defense apparatus and our peaceful methods and goals so that security and freedom can prosper together.
Like and largely responsible for the massive changes in our industrial-military arrangements, the technological revolution of the last decade has been.
In this revolution, research has become the focal point; it is also becoming more formalised, more complex and more costly. An increasing proportion of research is being carried out for the federal government, the government or at its direction.
Today, a lone inventor, drilling in his workshop, is shrouded by working groups of scientists in laboratories and test areas. In the same way, a free university, historically a source of free ideas and scientific discoveries, has had a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge cost, the government's contract is practically a substitute for intellectual curiosity. Now hundreds of new electronic computers are on every old board.
The prospect of national academics dominating federal employment, allocating projects and the power of money is constantly present and must be seriously considered.
While we appreciate scientific research and discovery as we should, we must also be aware of the same and opposite danger that public policy itself could become a prisoner of the scientific and technological elite.
The task of statesmanship is to shape, balance and integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system - always towards the highest objectives of our free society.
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Another factor in maintaining balance is the element of time. When we look at the future of society, we - you, me, and our government - must avoid the urge to live only for today and for our own comfort and to plunder the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot stop the physical property of our grandchildren without risking their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all future generations, not become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
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America knows that on the long journey of history that is yet to be written, this ever-shrinking world of ours must not become a community of terrible fear and hatred, but instead must become a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.
Such a Confederation must be an equivalent Confederation. The weakest must come to the negotiating table with the same confidence as we, protected by our moral, economic and military power. This table, although marked by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned because of a certain agony of the battlefield.
Disarmament, with respect and trust, is a permanent imperative. Together, we must learn how to create differences, not weapons, but intellect and decent intentions. Since this need is so urgent and obvious, I admit that I am giving up my official duties in this area with a certain sense of disappointment. As someone who witnessed the horrors and enduring sadness of war - as someone who knows that another war could completely destroy this civilization, which has been so slowly and painfully built for thousands of years - I wish I could say that there is a lasting peace in sight tonight.
Fortunately, I can say that the war was prevented. The course towards our final goal has been made constant progress. But there's so much to do. As a private citizen, I will never stop doing the little I can to help the world move on this path.
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So - in this last wish of a good evening for you as your president - thank you for the many opportunities you have given me in the public service in war and peace. I believe that you will find something of value in this service; as far as the rest, I know that you will find ways to improve your performance in the future.
You and I, my fellow citizens, must be strong in the belief that all nations under God will achieve the goal of peace and justice. May we always be unwavering in our devotion to principles, self-confidence, but humble in power, diligent in our efforts to achieve the great goals of the nation.
I am expressing to all nations of the world once again the prayer and lasting inspiration of America:
We pray that the people of all religions, of all races, of all nations can be satisfied in their great human needs; that those who are now denied the opportunity can enjoy it fully; that all those who desire freedom can experience their spiritual blessing; that those who have freedom also understand their heavy responsibility; that all those who are insensitive to the needs of others learn to love; that the scourge of poverty, disease and ignorance will disappear from the country and that, in good time, all people will live together in peace, guaranteed by the binding power of mutual respect and love.