What Would President Washington Say Now?

Time to buy gifts for the holidays. If you have anyone you care about who cares about the great divide in this country, you need to read and buy them the book called Washington’s Farewell by John Avlon. It is all about our founding father’s warning to future generations. It is all about George Washington’s final speech as our first President and his message then applies so well to how divided our government is now. We need history. We need to look at our past and see how we can learn from the conflicts that troubled our nation then and now. Sadly nothing much has changed but Washington has a great message that we all should be following.

Washington’s farewell speech is so famous throughout the years that it was printed more times than our Declaration of Independence. He wrote the speech to warn Americans about the forces that can ruin our democratic way of life. He stressed three dangerous things to our lifestyles. Hyper partnership, excessive debt and foreign powers influencing our election. Here we are 200 years later and these same three issues are ruining our country!

The speech is timely and yet timeless too. Before America, no democratic government had survived. The reason he believed that hyper partnership was a danger was because he was not a member of a political party and he noted that the Constitution doesn’t mention on purpose the political parties of Independent, Republican or Democratic. It does mention freedom of speech. He felt that political parties would become so self- interested that we would have a deadlocked and dysfunctional democracy and fast forward, that is exactly how our government is functioning now with fights along party lines on issues like healthcare and gun control.

We need to read and learn from history. Trump doesn’t reflect on anything. He is self-centered. This morning he lifted the ban on big game trophy hunting and is allowing the remains of large majestic animals of our earth to be slaughtered and brought home as trophies despite their endangered status. SAD!

Washington had to deal then with foreign powers meddling in our election process. Then it was the British and the French who wanted a governing place in our government. Now we already know that Russia HAS taken over the governing power in the Ukraine and Poland and provides weapons to Syria. We are currently trying to sort out what Russia has done to our election process now. Washington’s speeches are evident of the morality aspect to the Presidency. Where is Trump’s morals?

The only thing Trump and Washington have in common is their belief of peace through strength. They both want and wanted a strong military presence. The difference is that Washington brought to the Presidency personal virtues that Trump doesn’t seem to have. Honesty, integrity and humility and a lifetime commitment to public service. Trump lies, has no moral code so integrity is out and certainly is not humbled in any way. He believes he deserved the finest things money can buy all the time and who cares how dishonestly he made that money. Trump definitely does not have “a lifetime commitment to public service.”

Trump came into his Presidency with the, us against them attitude and we can all see that after a year of his message, it hasn’t helped this country at all. Washington said “… that pretend patriots will try to divide Americans against one another.”  It is clear that we are now living in a divided country. Washington said, “We need to be focused on this eternal truth. We need people in our government that put country over party.  Our independence as a nation is inseparable from our interdependence as a people.” So in other words whenever anyone tries to pretend it represents the American flag and hide behind it for Confederacy racism, or kneeling during our anthem, or gun rights when innocent people are being slaughtered daily in this country NOW, they lost all meaning of what our flag and our democracy MEANS.

We need a new generation of people in our government who reads the constitution and reads the words of Washington and our other founding fathers and get America on the right road again. Somebody get Trump to read a book, get away from sensational TV and to stop tweeting infantile threats to North Korea with back to back name calling of old man, short and fat, rocket man that sounds like something mean spirited  4^th graders would say to each other. It is dangerous when very unwise people have their fingers on nuclear weapons and financial wealth suppressing us all and making us live our days in fear.

The author of this book was the speech writer for Rudy   Giuliani when he was the well liked Mayor of New York City after 911. He is now the boss of The Daily Beast, a publication that was the first news that Trump blacklisted even before he became President. SAD!