Next year we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America or our Semiquincentennial. On this date 250 years ago our Founding Fathers at great peril to their lives declared their independence from then the most powerful nation of the face of the earth – Great Britian. Many of our Founders would lose their lives, livelihood, and property in the ensuing conflict, but they were willing to risk it all for the cause of liberty.
Our Republic has stood the test of time through numerous armed conflicts, a disastrous civil war that threatened to end our very existence, the Great Depression and yet we continue to this day to persevere serving as Ronald Reagan stated “that shinning city on the hill’ that provides the beacon of freedom for those oppressed around the world. Though we may have our flaws there is no other nation of the face of the earth like the great experiment of American democracy that endures to this very day.
Near the end of his second term as president, George Washington published The Address of Gen. Washington to the People of America on His Declining the Presidency of the United States better known subsequently as his “Farewell Address” The address’s most frequently cited passage is a paragraph on the essential place of morality, and particularly of religion, in civic life:
“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that 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.”
Washington’s address deals extensively with the fragile nature of our Union, characterizing it as a preeminent good that ought to be closely guarded. His prescience alludes to regional tensions that would later erupt into the Civil War. Following that he warns of the “spirit of party,” where he saw the rise and influence of political parties as a great danger to the new nation. Many of his statements were indeed prophetic in our current polarized political atmosphere.
https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/past-projects/quotes/article
In particular: “ [political parties] 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. “
In view of the most recent acrimonious and partisan election cycle I say amen to such sage words from our Founding Father. Let’s hope that the political parties of which Washington shunned do not at some point work for the greater good and do not consume American Democracy that has stood the test of time for 250 years and is still going strong.
