At SHAPE headquarters just outside of Paris, one of General Eisenhower's daily chores is to wave aside invitations to speak his mind on U.S. politics. At home, this determination to keep SHAPE out of politics has been exploited by both the Taft and Fair Deal camps to their benefit. Both pass the word that Eisenhower is too much of a mystery man to be trusted with the 1952 presidential nomination. But Ike's views on U.S. Government are a mystery only to people who were not listening two years ago when President Eisenhower of Columbia University, dressed in civvies, delivered a series of speeches on public affairs.
Imprisoned Security. Eisenhower talked mostly about what he called "ideas and ideals—not individuals." But he made it clear enough that he was opposed to the basic domestic doctrines of both Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. He warned of the dangers of expanding Federal Government, the delusions of the welfare state, the fallacy of the class struggle, and the perils of loose spending. Said he in New York in 1949: "Jefferson [was] a man we recognize as the great liberal of his time, a man who could say, 'The best government is the least government.' Now we recognize the degree to which we have changed when we come to see that the definition of a liberal is a man who, in Washington, wants to play the Almighty with our money."
At Columbia in 1948, he said: "All our cherished rights—the right of free speech, free worship, ownership of property, equality before the law—all these are mutually dependent for their existence. Thus, when shallow critics denounce the profit motive inherent in our system of private enterprise, they ignore the fact that it is an economic support of every human right we possess and that, without it, all rights would soon disappear."
He told the combined Galveston luncheon clubs: "If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison . . . But if an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government." In New York he declared: "Possibly we have become too regardful of things that we call luxuries . . . Maybe we like caviar and champagne when we ought to be out working on beer and hot dogs. Whatever it is, the thing that has happened to us is of the spirit."
"Millions of us today," Ike warned the 1949 Columbia graduating class, "seem to fear that individual freedom is leading us toward social chaos; that individual opportunity has forever disappeared ... that we have reached the point where the individual is far too small to cope with his circumstances; that his lifelong physical security against every risk is all that matters. More than this, we hear that such security must be attained by surrendering to centralized control the management of our society . . . On every count, the fearful men are wrong . . ."
Republican Direction. Before the American Bar Association in St. Louis in 1949, Ike tagged himself as a middle-of-the-roader, but his road seemed to be going in a Republican direction. Said he: "We will not accord to the central government unlimited authority, any more than we will bow our necks to the dictates of the uninhibited seekers after personal power in finance, labor, or any other field."