Eisenhower Argmnt Paper

Megan Nalli

Mrs. Post

AP Language

31 January 2011

…

         History shows the follies of mankind. By looking at what those before have done, humans learn how to better handle situations. When unprecedented problems arise, widespread fear and condemnation stain a population. The “Communist threat” of the 1950’s is a prime example of such a time. It and the Cold War were still new to the scene when President Eisenhower gave his farewell address and spoke of the “hostile ideology” that America faced. Americans of that time rejected-and tried to correct and prevent-what they perceived as the antithesis of everything for which they stood. However it has not spread as the Communists hoped it would. Whether America’s attempts to protect her workers helped or whether it is just that flawed of a system, one thing still stands: Eisenhower’s warning is no longer valid.

         At the time the communists took over Russia, thousands were starving to death. The numerous Causalities of World War I and the inept leaders bred hatred that has never been seen in America’s history. The colonists didn’t leave Britain because they were starving and being ordered to death by a stint in the military. We left because we wanted a say in how the money was spent. It is for that reason hath we couldn’t understand how people were willing to convert their countries into places where everyone was the same. A starving man will do things he’d never do if there was any other alternative. For those countries where they were always oppressed, it must have seemed like a Godsend-Stalin’s cruelty aside because surely he must have been better than Ivan the Terrible or Russia’s other inept rulers.

         In today’s fast paced economy where nobody wants to be left behind, countries are scrambling to keep up with everyone else. Even China-one of the few Communist countries-is becoming more and more similar to a Capitalist system. That is not to say that either system is better than the other. The only real problem-when one ignores America’s materialistic views for a moment-with communism is that it can never work the way it does on paper. The way it works in real life tends to be is “everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others.” That is where many of the issues and conflicts with communism come in to the picture.

         However, those conflicts and the fear of it spreading did good for the industrial countries. Capitalist countries forced the business owners to adhere to stricter regulations and  to prevent the “Workers’ Rebellion” that was prophesized. The social programs designed to alleviate the burden of the poor may or may not have stopped the ‘rebellion,’ but they have strengthened America’s middle class for certain.

         Not all communist countries are the evil that people see. China-child limit and enforcements aside-houses many of the factories that produce goods that Americans use in everyday living. The cheap, foreign labor hurts American workers to a degree, but that is offset by the cheaper prices we pay for those goods that are imported.

         On the global scope that Eisenhower mentioned, it never spread too far out of the region where it began, nor did those countries have a big impact on our own economy. The countries that need to worry about communism taking over are predominately poor, overpopulated, underfed, and have weak and/or non-existent central governments.

         Now that foreign aid is better and more widespread, the need for starving people to do drastic things has been reduced, with it, communism. That way of life is dying and giving way to better economic systems. Eisenhower’s worries have been put to rest, as so many others before him.



Word Count: 616