Thanks. Though the snopes link seems to be working, the full document is a better source anyway.

One useful point from the snopes article was the reminder of the pitfalls of applying words written decades ago to present-day situations. Just as "history may not repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes", old opinions lose their literal relevance but still serve as examples of broad themes.

I don't think Ike's principles were as situational as you imply, when you speculate--as snopes cautions us not to--that Ike's opinion would be different today, primarily because the price tag is now known. He also might've dismissed number play, such as comparing SS outlays in earlier era when there were fewer retirees from a system not yet two decades old (demographics, man) and people didn't live as long.

When I integrate Ike's thoughts in this letter with his warning six years later about the "military industrial complex", I'm even less inclined to label him a conservative in the modern sense. I think he viewed Hunt not as somebody who simply disagreed with him on economic policy, but as somebody who posed a threat to democracy by advocating anti-democratic ideas about the proper power and role of the wealthy. A threat of an order similar to giant defense contractors and concentrations of power in the Pentagon. It's all of a piece, and I think if Ike consistently applied his principles to today's world, I think he'd focus on the cancerous growth of the very thing he warned us about--Wall Street, and our shiny new post-9/11 "military-industrial-surveillance" complex. Things that would label him a RINO or worse in the eyes of today's "conservative" wingnut.