A fortune teller, Donald Trump, and George Washington

I visited a fortune teller to ask what Donald Trump would be doing for the next year or two.  She refused to take my money; she said Trump is too unpredictable.

She did offer to let me talk to George Washington for his thoughts.

Washington did say that the city of Washington should be renamed because it has gone against all of his hopes and advice.  He said that Trump reminded him of Pete Seeger’s song “The Big Muddy” in which “the big fool says to push on.”

Washington said that he and Seeger had struck up quite a friendship.  In fact, Washington said that Seeger is a true populist.

Washington saved his great scorn for the Senate.  He complained that every year they read his “Farewell Address” and every year they ignored it completely, especially the parts about factions, excessive military, and avoiding foreign entanglements.  He started to list “enemies” who should be our friends and “friends” we should hold at a distance, but the time I paid the fortune teller for ran out.

Let’s have facts, not factions

Every year the Senate reads George Washington’s Farewell Address, and every year they ignore it.  This also leads to the break-down of the deliberate designation of three INDEPENDENT branches of government.

The quiescent Republicans seem to have ignored Washington’s warning agains factions more than any Congress in decades.

“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 triumphsof 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 councils 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 theeins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

Please send this to your Senators and Representatives, regardless of party.  Your letters may give them some backbone to take action on George Washington's warning.

Does U.S. Senate follow advice it honors?

Every year, the U.S. Senate has a member read George Washington’s Farewell Address.  For more details of this, see https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Washingtons_Farewell_Address.htm.

It is a slog for many of us today to read the Address in its entirety, but it has much that has been ignored, even by those who read it.  For example,

"Hence likewise they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establish-ments, which under any form of government are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty."

Or, very germane to the current Senate:

"The alternate 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.  The disorders and miseries which result 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.”

Have the many Republican Senators who have read the Farewell Address already forgotten:

"It is important, likewise, that the habits of think-ing in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another.  The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism."

There is much to agree with and some to disagree with, but the main thrust should be a guide for all of us.  What bothers me is how much those who annually read and listen to the reading of this document soon ignore it.

I ask my readers to select a few key points and write, email, or phone their two Senators if they are honestly following these points or have compelling reasons in the public interest to ignore some of Washington’s advice.

For the text, see https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-CDOC-106sdoc21/pdf/GPO-CDOC-106sdoc21.pdf.

See also "Did George Washington warn us about Donald Trump".

"Strict constructionist judges”?

"'Strict construction' is a manner of interpreting the U.S. Constitution using a literal and narrow definition of language in the document without regard to changes that have occurred in American society since the 18th century document was written.”
- "Trump to Nominate 'Strict Constructionist' to Supreme Court", New York Times, 2017-01-26

I find that it strange that “strict constructionists” manage to interpret “We the People” as “We the Corporations”, to interpret that Congress has no right to regulate commerce among the states, and to interpret that “the people” in the second amendment means persons.

Will one of these "strict constructionists" strike down any anti-Muslim actions by Trump?  Remember all those "Christians" who want their freedom to discriminate.  If these judges were “strict constructionists” they would rule that people are free to believe what they want, but they can’t practice whatever they want when it impinges on others.

Will one of these “strict constructionists” stop Trump if he goes to war without the approval of Congress?

If you read George Washington’s “Farewell Address”, you will find a lot about the “intent” of the Founders and how much governments (of whatever party) have not followed the “intent” very well.  See “George Washington: Ignored Father of His Country".

If you can, watch a movie on John Marshall, an early Chief Justice, who struggled with many of these questions.