George Washington still speaks to us;

[Twist_U_Up]

George Washington in his farwell address in 1796 warned us of the current administration.

This address is powerful and a great insight into just the things we are seeing and experiencing now.


http://www.usnews.com/usnews/documents/doctranscripts/document_15_transcript.htm

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"But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it;"

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But these considerations, however powerfully they address themselves to your sensibility, are greatly outweighed by those which apply more immediately to your interest. Here every portion of our country finds the most commanding motives for carefully guarding and preserving the union of the whole.

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there will always be reason to distrust the patriotism of those who in any quarter may endeavor to weaken its bands.

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All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests.

However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

Towards the preservation of your government, and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite, not only that you steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the Constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown. In all the changes to which you may be invited, remember that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character of governments as of other human institutions; that experience is the surest standard by which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution of a country; that facility in changes, upon the credit of mere hypothesis and opinion, exposes to perpetual change, from the endless variety of hypothesis and opinion; and remember, especially, that for the efficient management of your common interests, in a country so extensive as ours, a government of as much vigor as is consistent with the perfect security of liberty is indispensable. Liberty itself will find in such a government, with powers properly distributed and adjusted, its surest guardian. It is, indeed, little else than a name, where the government is too feeble to withstand the enterprises of faction, to confine each member of the society within the limits prescribed by the laws, and to maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment of the rights of person and property.

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.


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The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim.

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So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.

As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils? Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.

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Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.

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But, if I may even flatter myself that they may be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good; that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism; this hope will be a full recompense for the solicitude for your welfare, by which they have been dictated.

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Relying on its kindness in this as in other things, and actuated by that fervent love towards it, which is so natural to a man who views in it the native soil of himself and his progenitors for several generations, I anticipate with pleasing expectation that retreat in which I promise myself to realize, without alloy, the sweet enjoyment of partaking, in the midst of my fellow-citizens, the benign influence of good laws under a free government, the ever-favorite object of my heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our mutual cares, labors, and dangers.

United States
19th September, 1796

Geo. Washington

[Faygo Kid]

1. There's the real W.

Yeah, I know, slaveholder and all, but he would have seen through the evil of this crew in about two seconds. I liked this part, fits the Patriot Act:

One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the Constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown.

[Charlie Brown]

4. Washington freed his slaves upon his death

This was a pretty bold step for a wealthy Virginia planter in the 1790s. Hypocrite or not, Washington certainly stood by his ideals of democracy.

http://www.house.gov/petri/gw007.htm

As early as 1786, Washington had determined that the only acceptable solution would be emancipation. "There is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of ," he wrote to Robert Morris. While he took no steps politically, he began to take steps personally -- at home at Mount Vernon -- to bring the sorry system to an end. At first he devised a scheme to rent out his estates. With cash from land sales and income from the rents, he wrote privately to his manager, he hoped to "liberate a certain species of property which I possess, very repugnantly to my own feelings." Unfortunately, there were no acceptable offers to lease the farms.

Having had no success during his lifetime, Washington began to think of what might be done upon his death. In 1799, he took to preparing a will, over 28 pages, which he wrote, and copied himself. In many ways, the will was unremarkable. It provided for the payment of outstanding debts and stipulated that his wife Martha was to have use of the estate during her lifetime.

What was revolutionary, however, were the next few lines. In them, George Washington provided that all of his slaves be freed and that they be supported financially or trained for a period of years for "some useful occupation" to assure their preparedness for life as free men and women.

Alone of the Founding Fathers, Washington freed his slaves. And he did so in a will and testament that he knew would be published widely upon his death. To us, the act seems unexceptional, indeed obligatory. For Washington, however, it was once again evidence of the virtuous precedent he was bound and determined to set. The new American republic could survive only if it relied upon the virtuous and full participation of all its citizens.

[Faygo Kid]

5. Yes, thanks. Just wanted to get that out of the way here.

I knew it, but wanted to acknowledge his slaveholding so as not to base the discussion on that instead of his wisdom on all else. I very much look forward to visiting the new exhibit hall at Mt. Vernon, which should help to humanize this very human man. (Maybe our best presidential athlete and dancer.)

[radio4progressives]

2. This needs to be read in the Halls of Congress Every Single Day

That if only it be read in every morning session and close the day's proceedings - and broadcast on C-Span so that Charlatans, Judases, Christian Taliban and the kool aid drinking bush bots might absorb..

i would suggest that the majority of our own party leadership hear and read for the first time, might finally wake up to the perils we are facing that through own complicity or stupidity assisted to enable.

[NCarolinawoman]

3. Fantastic idea. What do the bushbots and the enablers

really know about history and what the founding fathers were all about???!!!