While researching some things about our first president -- you know, the stuff they never dared or bothered to share with me in public school -- I ran across a copy of George Washington's farewell address delivered on Sept. 17, 1796 upon fulfillment of his time as president.
I've never read this speech, and much like my chagrin at realizing I'd lived 43 years without reading anything by Dylan Thomas who was born in the same town as my Welsh ancestors, I am embarrassed that I know so little about what Washington said as he stepped into the twilight of an extraordinary career. NOW I understand why he's our greatest president bar none. It has nothing to do with having been first and everything to do with integrity and eerily accurate foresight.
What a pity the buffoons in our nation's capital, most of whom were no doubt schooled as inadequately as I was, don't take Washington's warnings to heart. Much would be different if they did.
As for the atheists among us, the ones who are so shrill, so strident, so condemning of anyone who deigns to believe religion was, in fact, a cornerstone of the building of our country, read on. You'll see how poorly educated YOU are and how indeed spiritual belief was not only common and accepted but, in President Washington's opinion, essential to the survival of the United States. Below, please find the exact text of his remarks:
Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens. The mere Politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connexions with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
And then there's this, sound counsel for our current administration. Can someone figure out how to tattoo it backwards onto the foreheads of all in Congress so that every time they look in a mirror or gaze admiringly at themselves in a reflecting pond or store window they will be reminded of exactly what it is they're supposed to be doing for the citizenry?
To the efficacy and permanency of your Union, a Government for the whole is indispensable. No alliances, however strict, between the parts can be an adequate substitute; they must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions, which all alliances in all times have experienced. Sensible of this momentous truth, you have improved upon your first essay, by the adoption of a Constitution of Government better calculated than your former for an intimate Union, and for the efficacious management of your common concerns. This Government, the offspring of our own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true Liberty. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their Constitutions of Government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish Government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established Government.
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.
Good ol' George. He saw, more than two centuries ago, just how destructive "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" could be. I maintain that we are now being governed by a "small but artful and enterprising minority of the community," and in time our country and its government will mirror "the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of fashion," inasmuch as it doesn't already.
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