Utopian States: Loves happy people

Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and co-operation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace. Dwight D. Eisenhower

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it. Dwight D. Eisenhower

I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone. Dwight D. Eisenhower

May we, in our dealings with all the peoples of the earth, ever speak the truth and serve justice. Dwight D. Eisenhower

There is nothing wrong with America that the faith, love of freedom, intelligence and energy of her citizens cannot cure. Dwight D. Eisenhower

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. Dwight D. Eisenhower, From a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953

Don’t join the book burners. Don’t think you’re going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don’t be afraid to go in your library and read every book… Dwight D. Eisenhower

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1953

Don’t think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech at Dartmouth College, June 14, 1953

What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight – it’s the size of the fight in the dog. Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech to the Republican National Committee, January 31, 1958

We succeed only as we identify in life, or in war, or in anything else, a single overriding objective, and make all other considerations bend to that one objective. Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech, April 2, 1957

“…in [July] 1945… Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. …the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.

“During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude…”

– Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380

In a Newsweek interview, Eisenhower again recalled the meeting with Stimson:

“…the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”

– Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63

The Lives of Others (original title in German: Das Leben der Anderen) is an Academy Award-winning German movie, marking the feature film debut of director/screenwriter Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. It won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, along with seven Deutscher Filmpreis awards including best film, best director, best screenplay, best actor and best supporting actor, after having set a new record with 11 nominations. It was also nominated for and won Best Foreign Language Film at the 64th Golden Globe Awards.

The thriller/drama is about the cultural scene of East Berlin, monitored by secret agents of the Stasi, the GDR’s secret police. It stars Ulrich Mühe as Stasi agent Gerd Wiesler, Ulrich Tukur as his chief officer Anton Grubitz, Sebastian Koch as the playwright Georg Dreyman, and Martina Gedeck as his lover Christa-Maria Sieland.

The plot begins in 1984 East Germany. The Stasi agent Gerd Wiesler, a heart-felt supporter of the communist regime, is assigned to spy on playwright Georg Dreyman, who is suspected of Western leanings. Stasi agents secretly bug Dreyman’s apartment. In the attic of the apartment building hide Wiesler and an assistant who take turns monitoring the activity below 24 hours a day. They report anything that might be relevant.

Dreyman is a supporter of the regime, but dislikes the way dissidents are treated. When Jerska, an artist friend commits suicide because he has been blacklisted for several years, Dreyman publishes anonymously in West Germany an article on suicide rates in the GDR: while it publishes detailed statistics on many things, since the 70s it does not publish any statistics on suicide rates, presumably because they are embarrassingly high.

The East Germans blackball artists, performers, writers and others that speak about government, especially anything negative. Some lose their jobs or passion and commit suicide.

Back to present time in America…

American spy agencies like NSA monitor ALL communications – the East Germans of 1984 only monitored selected people. American Computers scan communications for key word combinations – the Germans required human listeners to monitor dialog. Some Americans and family members were imprisoned without protection of Constitutional amendments – the same happened to East Germans in 1984.

Americans are blackballed from their profession by labeling them felons. A felon can merely be a person that has defended himself from the aggravated assault of a confused or malicious police officer. East Germans were blackballed by similar labels and laws.

Dreyman was on the verge of prison for publishing an article on suicide rates in the GDR. I wrote a proposal to the National Science Foundation to report trends in significant statistics such as suicide rates only to have my proposal not only completely rejected but ridiculed.

I watched the movie and wondered if America isn’t as bad as the evil East Germany Stasi. This is a great movie because it causes the viewer to reflect on the merits and morals of government. The writer, screenwriter and director get my nomination as Utopian heroes.