Reminders from George Washington

Tomorrow, if tradition is followed, a U. S. Senator will read George Washington's "Farewell Address".  Correction: the reading is scheduled for 2:00 p.m. Monday, 2013-02-25.  .Jeanne Shaheen, D-NH, read it last year, and so a Republican Senator will read it this year.  Click here for more about this tradition.

No matter the party of whomever reads it, from Congresses past and current actions, I feel that Congress, and many others, politicians or not, ignore some very important parts of Washington's address.  Click here for the full text from the Library of Congress.

Here are some of my selections that I feel we as a nation have ignored:

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

"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."

"The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government pre-supposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government."

"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."

"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 spirit of party] "serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection.'

To facilitate to them the performance of their duty, it is essential that you should practically bear in mind that towards the payment of debts there must be revenue; that to have revenue there must be taxes; that no taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant…"

"…permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded and that in place of them just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest."

By all means let us return to the intent of the Founders

But be careful what you ask for!

"The intent of the Founders" is one of the rallying cries of the Tea Parties and others who are unhappy with certain events in Washington.  One of their charges is that health care is not in the Constitution; therefore health care legislation is unconstitutional.  But the U.S. Flag and the Pledge of Allegiance are not mentioned in the Constitution, does that mean they are unconstitutional?

The Founders were against standing armies.  In his Farewell Address, George Washington said, "they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty…"  Yet some of those who want to follow the intent of the Founders, want an even larger military (without paying taxes for it).

One of the intent of the Founders was for Congress to establish post offices and post roads.  I wonder if the Founders would have called for the privatization of the Post Office.  This same section of the Constitution gives Congress the power "To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions".  I wonder if gun-toting Tea Partiers realize that the Founders might consider them insurrectionists!!

One thing the Founders seem to have that few anywhere on the political map seem to have - humility.  Unlike partisans of all stripes who think they have all the answers, the Founders knew that they couldn't foresee how the country would develop.  Therefore, the Founders charged Congress with making specific laws and included in the Constitution the mechanisms for amending the Constitution.

Sources:
U.S. Constitution - http://www.nara.gov/exhall/charters/constitution/constitution.html
George Washington's Farewell Address - http://www.100megspop3.com/bark/Beware.html