49 years ago today, American's greatest war hero, commander of the allied forces in the worst war in history, and a two-term Republican president chose in his final message to the world from public office to warn of two threats: a new military-industrial complex and the new scientific-technological elite.

In his farewell address President Dwight D. Eisenhower observed the creation of a new armaments industry and its conjunction with a new immense military establishment that bore "little relation to that known of any of my predecessors in peacetime, or, indeed, by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.” He warns:

We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Much like the Oceania of George Orwell’s novel 1984, the US has ever since been on a perpertual war economy. (Eisenhower's speech was, in no small measure a rejoinder to Democrat JFK's assertion of a “missile gap.”) For decades, Communism and the Soviet Union remained a useful, through increasingly implausable, threat to justify ever-increasing military budgets. Even after the USSR imploded, military budgets under new Democrat, Clinton, continued ever upwards. And now, again we have a Democrat mandated with “change,” yet America, without enemies among the major nations of the world, will for the first time in history spend more than one trillion dollars on military expenses this year, considerably more than the entire rest of the world combined.

Eisenhower's warning of the military industrial complex is not generally well known. In twenty two years of formal education, I never heard mention of it. But at least the term permeates the general American conciousness. In contrast, there is virtually no awareness of the second threat, that

… 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.

With regard to elections, both of these concerns have been borne out beyond Ike’s wildest nightmares:

• Voters now must place absolute faith in "the man behind the curtain" to cast and count their ballots in accord with their intention. The new election industry is now almost completely technologized, and election industry programmers and CEOs are the wizards reporting the bytes. Ordinary citizens (i.e., everyone else) cannot peak behind the curtains even when the numbers are patently ludicrous (e.g., Ohio 2004, Ohio 2005, Sarasota 2006, New Hampshire 2008, etc...)
  

• The military industrial complex now not only influences elections with vast sums of money, but has surreptitiously – bizarrely – become deeply embedded in in voting processes and legislation, lobbying to ensure further election technologization (and thereby these trillion dollar annual budgets).

The 50 year anniversary of this speech may be our last best chance to get Ike's warning out, to take a first step toward creating an alert and knowledgeable citizenry. Any thoughts on how we might reach out to the public? Dramatize his prophecies with regards to elections? Ideas most welcome. For now, read, listen to, or view the speech.