There is something odd about celebrating Presidents Day—as if we are to celebrate all Presidents without regard to merit. There was a time, very recently, when a celebration meant something, but alas, like a participation trophy, greatness has been set aside. February was the birth month of three truly exceptional Presidents, Lincoln, Washington and Reagan, and we honor none of them; instead we proclaim the institution of the Presidency.
Consider George Washington, our first President, a man I was told by Sister Marilyn Jean back at Holy Cross Grade School, could never tell a lie. He was the subject of comics, so that meant I actually read about him, too. When asked to run for a third term he declined, and it is said he did that to avoid any suggestion that the USA would ever be ruled by a monarch. As the leader of the militia he faced and defeated the most powerful nation in the world. His story is worthy of study and his legacy worthy of commemoration.
President Washington left us a remarkable document, his farewell address, and in that address he describes his motivations and his expectations for the country he birthed. If you have not read it, it is worth your time. Farewell Address, 19 September 1796 You will find it prescient as he foretold the coming civil war, lamented the human tendency to seek power and most importantly spoke to us, two hundred fifty years later, about the need for a belief in God and in a civic morality.
We are all shaped by the times in which we live, and Washington’s time was violent and the future was unknown. Britain’s despotism was the rule, not the exception. So, Washington observed how we are different, “Interwoven as is the love of liberty with every ligament of your hearts, no recommendation of mine is necessary to fortify or confirm the attachment.” It is liberty, freedom, that is at the core of our country. Should that disappear, then there is, indeed, no country worth defending.
Not surprisingly, Washington foresaw that the Constitution of this new republic must be held sacrosanct. The law stood supreme, given the social contract the colonists had made with each other, memorialized in the Constitution. There would come, he believed, a time, in spite of the Constitution, when too much power would come to a President. “The spirit of encroachment” he said “tends to consolidate powers of all the departments in one and thus to create, whatever form of government, a real despotism.” Surely we are all aware of this tendency in our modern age with an ever growing leviathan, the Federal Government, and the misuse of power in the J6 prosecutions, censorship of social media and a rampant government lawlessness.
The reality is that we choose every day what paths we will take, both privately and publicly. Those paths are chosen based on our shared history and our shared beliefs. Can any country survive without those shared beliefs? Washington answered that question:
“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that’s man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them.”
And, as to the agnosticism of our age, Washington could not be clearer that it represents a grave threat to liberty and freedom.
“And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”
Perhaps it is this judgment about what is required to preserve our country that has led so many in academia and on the left to seek to celebrate a “President’s Day” rather than to celebrate our nation’s great founder. As Washington concluded, “It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of free government.”
So it is. Our nation would not have come to be without George Washington. He had an abiding humility in the face of God and he had an abiding faith in the ability of his fellow citizens to work together based on a common morality. That is a legacy worth celebrating.
Retired Wisconsin Circuit Court Judge. President Trump’s attorney in 2020. Speaker, columnist, talk radio guest, father, grandfather and fisherman.
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