In 1954 the deadline for filing your taxes was March 15th, not April 15th. The April deadline wouldn't come into effect until 1955. But even in 1954, President Eisenhower was alarmed that people of a certain massive income got away without "paying their fair share".

In this radio address, Eisenhower takes to task those who make a substantial amount of income, yet pay no tax on it, instead leaving the Middle-Class and those people who can ill-afford it the most to bear the burden.

It's interesting when you realize you're listening to a Republican President reciting the benefits of a fair tax system and the reason taxes exist was to accomplish what the private sector couldn't.

And almost sixty years later the conversation has shifted. And, judging by all I've heard, Dwight Eisenhower would be considered something of a Socialist Radical in today's climate.

Funny how things change.

Here is the complete radio address by President Eisenhower, broadcast on Tax Day (March 15th), 1954.

It would be impossible to imagine someone like Dwight Eisenhower being around today, unthinkable in our current state to even remotely consider him as Republican Presidential material.

But even during his time as President, he was often criticized as being out of touch, certainly within his own party. It did earn him the nickname of "old bubblehead" among the Press corps. And maybe he was the first of what eventually became a long line of "Figurehead Presidents" - those who knowingly or unknowingly left the back door open and paid little attention to the real culprits in the administration and his party, slowly dismantling democracy, one seemingly innocuous department at a time.

It was said he was at loggerheads with his own administration - coming from a Military and not a political background, not understanding why being Commander-in-Chief didn't afford him the same leadership platform as Supreme Allied Commander. That in the end he expressed a level of sadness and frustration that much of what he tried to accomplish was thwarted by political interests and undermining.

But in 1954 he was still looking at it all rather optimistically and on May 31st he delivered an address he called "Man's Right To Knowledge And It's Free Use Thereof".

President Eisenhower: “Amid such alarms and uncertainties, doubters begin to lose faith in themselves, in their country, in their convictions. They begin to fear other people’s ideas, every new idea. They begin to talk about censoring the sources and the communication of ideas. They forget that truth is the bulwark of freedom, as suppression of truth is the weapon of dictatorship. We know that when censorship goes beyond the observance of common decency, or the protection of the nation’s obvious interests, it quickly becomes for us a deadly danger. It means conformity by compulsion in educational institutions. It means a controlled instead of a free press. It means the loss of human freedom. The honest men and women among these would-be censors and regulators may merely forget that the price of their success would be the destruction of that way of life they want to preserve. But the dishonest and the disloyal know exactly what they are attempting to do; perverting and undermining a free society while falsely swearing allegiance to it. Whenever, and for whatever alleged reason people attempt to crush ideas to mask their convictions, to view every neighbor as a possible enemy, to seek some kind of divining rod by which to test for conformity, a free society is in danger. Whenever mans right to knowledge and the use thereof is restricted, man’s freedom, in the same measure disappears.

Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit, from revolutionaries and rebels, men and women who dared to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.”

By today's standards, radical Left-Wing stuff. It's interesting how often Eisenhower is now quoted on the Internet, even during a recent rally at Occupy Los Angeles, to cheers and loud applause.

A former Republican President, lumped in with "those bongo-playing weed-heads" - the mind fairly reels.

But I think Ike may have gotten it.

Back in the day when you could blame everything on the Russians, the 1950's were a simmering pot of nothing but paranoia and fear. So much so, that on April 4, 1954 President Eisenhower made a radio address to the nation seeking to allay those fears. Well . . .sort of.

President Eisenhower: “ Sometimes you feel almost as if we could be excused for getting a little bit hysterical, because these dangers come from so many angles and there’s such different kinds. And no matter what we do, they still seem to exist. But underlying all of these dangers is this one thing; the threat we have from without, the great threat imposed upon us by aggressive Communism. The Atheistic doctrine that believes in Stateism as against our conception of the dignity of man is a quality before the law; that is the struggle of the ages.”

One of the many double messages rampant in the 1950's. And it's no wonder the Tranquilizer became so popular. I often wondered if they named it Miltown as an homage to Milhouse (vice-President Richard Nixon's middle name) rather than the borough in New Jersey. Coincidence? Perhaps.

Still . . . .

President Eisenhower proclaimed May 30th as Memorial Day in 1953. Asking for a day of prayer and remembrance in the hope of ending all wars.

Here is Eisenhower's proclamation, as read by Actor Robert Montgomery on May 29th, 1953.

No mention made of Barbecues or "Happy Memorial Day" anywhere.

A significant day for a lot of reasons. First, it's Martin Luther King Day but it's also the 50th anniversary of the famous Eisenhower Farewell Address, or the "Military-Industrial Complex" address as it's come to be known.

Pres. Eisenhower: "A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be might, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. . . . American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. . . . This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. . . .Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. . . . In the councils of government, 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."

Where one is a celebration of a life of peace, the other is an acknowledgment of a world in turmoil.

Still is.

As the Cold War reached new levels of tension, the thought persisted that eventually the shooting was going to start. And with the possibility of shooting also came the possibility of some kind of nuclear reprisal. The ring of fear was all-encompassing with the U.S. convinced the Soviet Union, knee-deep in treachery, would stop at nothing to achieve world domination. And the Soviet Union, no doubt fearful that the U.S., having exploded one Atomic Bomb over a city, could be easily capable of doing it again. And so came the Thousand Yard Stare, with two adversaries, poised unflinching at the trigger.

On December 8, 1953 President Eisenhower, freshly arrived from the Bermuda Conference, addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations on the subject of Nuclear Peril.

Pres. Eisenhower: On July 16th 1945 the United States set off the worlds first Atomic explosion. Since that date in 1945 the United State of America has conducted 42 test explosions. Atomic bombs today are more than twenty-five times as powerful as the weapons with which the Atomic Age dawned. While Hydrogen weapons are in the range of millions of tons of TNT equivalent. Today the United States stockpile of Atomic weapons, which of course increases daily, exceeds by many times the total equivalent of the total of all bombs and all shells that came from every plane and every gun in every theater of war in all of the years of World War 2.”

It was this sort of information we grew to be all too familiar with, throughout the Cold War period. That constant state of fear that somehow, somewhere the annihilation would start.

And you wonder why the 60's were so wacko?