Washington’s farewell in current affairs, questions of leadership and
partisanship
“Father of country,”
George Washington was American general and commander in chief of the colonial
armies in the American Revolution (1775–83) before becoming the first president
of the United States (April 30, 1789–March 3, 1797, Federalist Party, Vice
President John Adams who succeeded him with Thomas Jefferson as his vice
president). Washington was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia (1732) and died in
Mount Vernon, Virginia (1799).
Editing, brief comment by Carolyn Bennett
Particularly relevant to current affairs, Washington calls out false
patriots and private profit masquerading as public good. In his 1796 Farewell
Address, George Washington warns “against the mischief” of “favorites” and
factions in foreign and domestic “intrigue” and “against the impostures
(assumed character, the fraud) of pretended patriotism” |
| President George Washington's Farewell |
“… 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.
“With powers properly distributed and adjusted, liberty itself will
find in such a government its surest guardian. Where the government is too
feeble to withstand the enterprises of faction, it is, indeed, little else than
a name.”
Domestic, international affairs: Factions' breach of law tramples
liberty
 |
| First U.S. President's Farewell |
“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 the fundamental principle [of
liberty].”
These obstructionists “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 People], the will of a party — often a small but artful and
enterprising minority of the community; … [making]
[t]he 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.
 |
| Fourth U.S. President James Madison |
Tyranny: faction, partisan political party, corporate cabal over common
good
“The … domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit
of revenge, natural to party dissension — which in different ages and countries
has perpetrated the most horrid enormities — is itself a frightful despotism;”
and at length, “leads to a more formal and permanent despotism.”
The resulting “disorders and miseries… gradually incline the minds of
men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual. And sooner
or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than
his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation —
on the ruins of public liberty.”
Fast forward 200 years
 |
| Middle East Resources |
United States post 9/11 years of irrationality, endless wars
“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. Often the peace —
sometimes perhaps the liberty of nations — has [become] the victim.”
U.S. Foreign relations paradigm and practice
 |
| Major financial contributor to U.S. political party campaigns |
Siding with and leading aggressors, despots against demonstrators for
justice, liberty, human rights
A nation’s passionate attachment for another nation produces a variety
of evils, Washington said.
“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 [that
makes] the concessions: by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been
retained; and by exciting jealousy, ill will, and, in the parties from whom
equal privileges are withheld, a disposition to retaliate.
“It gives to the ambitious, corrupted or deluded citizens (who devote
themselves to the favorite nation) the
facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country. Without
odium, sometimes even with popularity,” to ornament deception, cover up “the
base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption or infatuation” with “the
appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable defense for public
opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good.”
“To the truly enlightened and independent patriot,” such attachments “in
avenues to foreign influence are particularly alarming.”
“…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 nation toward a great and
powerful nation dooms the weak to be a satellite to the powerful. “Excessive
partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another causes those
whom they provoke to see danger only on one side and to veil, even to second
the arts of influence on the other.” |
M
|
ore than 200 years later, what hits home in George Washington’s
farewell speech is this. Islanding or isolation is still out of the question.
We must engage as a nation among nations; we must also care honestly for our
own people.
Washington seems to be saying to our era of irrational post 9/11
pretexts and paranoia, of gilded “patriotic” play of favorites and pseudo-favorites
with Saudi Arabian despots and Israeli aggressors, capriciously marking “enemies”
(reverberating against peoples across the Middle Eastern region and domestically),
endless hostility and retaliatory warfare and domestic neglect — these are not
emblematic of “real patriotism.” They are in fact its antithesis: traitorous to
the common good everywhere.
Reinterpreting Washington, the real patriot resists “intrigues of
favorite,” dangerous dichotomies: friend or foe, enemy or ally, the Forty-third’s
“Axis of Evil,” financing or demonizing those “for us or against us.”
Sources and notes
George Washington: Farewell Address, published September 19, 1796 in
Philadelphia’s American Daily Advertiser, http://www.greatamericandocuments.com/speeches/washington-farewell.html.
Kucinich’s Facebook quote today prompted my search for the first U.S. president.
As a progressive, I believe we should take good ideas of the past and build on
them (do not stop at Washington or Jefferson, whoever seemed on the right
track), ever pushing ourselves, our society in the largest sense constructively
forward.
Dennis Kucinich:
“Political party — Does the ‘partisan spirit’ today serve the interests
of the American people?
“In his Farewell Address delivered September 19, 1796, George
Washington warned repeatedly against ‘the common and continual mischiefs of the
spirit’ of political parties:
‘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; ...
‘[t]hey 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….’
“Does partisanship today,” Kucinich asks, “‘subvert the power of the
people’ putting our nation at risk?”
I think George Washington would have answered yes to Dennis Kucinich’s question, and so do I.
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