Thoughts on the Father of our Country:
Rather than calling for royal robes and a crown, Washington said no. Even more important, despite his own dreams of glory, he was horrified that he had somehow inspired the idea in the first place.
Today, most politicians would be calling for the tailor and jeweler: Politicians at every level seem more worried about personal glory than public service. It is not that ambition is wrong or incompatible with a sense of duty to one’s country over one’s self; it is that ambition must be properly channeled and understood.
The current political class is a pretty sorry lot compared to the Founders. Screw “Presidents'” Day. I’m flying the flag tomorrow.
We live among a cult of celebrity. We need to destroy this cult before it destroys us.
Why not grab for power if the idiots will give it to ya? A man of principle like Washington would be destroyed in today’s culture. He wouldn’t pass the giggle test.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/DC-Decoder/2012/0220/Why-you-should-stop-calling-today-Presidents-Day-video
(It is a text article + a video, and you can ignore the video and just enjoy the text. )
Summary: “Presidents Day is a myth – the Federal Holiday is Washington’s Birthday” – so you can stop complaining about Presidents Day.
It’s was probably because in Washington’s time the history of Oliver Cromwell was a more recent event that learned men were familiar with. Cromwell sought to crush the Monarchy and form a republic of England. As a masterful tactician and shrewd politician he thoroughly routed the royalist Scottish forces and then had Charles I beheaded. His intention was to have the newly formed republic of England controlled by Parliament. But with the sudden death of a king there was no formalized method of assuming complete control since the power structures of English politics was built around the model a god king. So, a scant 4 years after the killing of a king, Cromwell disbanded Parliament and named himself Lord Protectorate of England, Scotland, and Wales; assuming everything but the title of king. Then following his death, Lord Protector Richard was appointed his successor but he only last 6 months before Charles II returned from the Netherlands and petitioned to be installed as the rightful King of England. So, only 20 years after Cromwell’s attempt at creating a republic, England was right back to being ruled by a king and it was if the whole republican experiment had never happened. The only lasting legacy of his reign was the creation of a new model army that appointed officers based upon aptitude rather than royal lineage.
I believe Washington understood this history quite well and didn’t want to have the blood of so many American patriots spilled in vain to only have the United States return back to the English monarchy after his death. That and I think he wanted to be able to live his last few remaining years at Mount Vernon in peace. Commanders-in-Chief can retire at some point but lords and kings only get to quit when the nails are pounded into the coffin lid.
It’s it interesting.
Our 1st POTUS was a humble man who had many great accomplishments, but who did not want to be ‘honored’ or made into a Monarch.
Our current POTUS is a man with humble accomplishments at best, yet demands to be honored as if he were a Monarch.
My, haven’t we come a long, long, sad , long way? Is it time to throw the Monarch in a dungeon and turn the ‘kingdom’ over to some Regents who really have some smarts?
Washington would have been horrified because he had become, while growing up in the patrician environs of Tidewaters Virginia, somehow, a committed republican. His favorite work of literature, which he had repeatedly staged during the war, was Addison’s Cato, wherein the noble old-republican protagonist dies heroically in stubborn war against a monarchist and usurper of the republic.
But really, don’t over-sell the virtue of the Founder generation. Washington himself could tell you tales of the screaming horrors and selfish self-dealing of his peers, subordinates, and opponents. Thomas Mifflin, Charles Lee, Horatio Gates, Benedict Arnold, Thomas Conway – the list is long and ignoble.