The Real George Washington

Here in the Nation's Capital, Donald J. Trump is now demanding that the Smithsonian tear down a piece of modern art in front of the National Museum of American History, and replace it with a towering statue of George Washington.  In addition, he is demanding that they immediately show respect for Our Founding Fathers by putting on a five year exhibition celebrating George Washington.  

Honestly, I think they should take him up on that.

Specifically, I think they should create an exhibit specifically focusing on the end of Washington's Presidency, and the process by which Washington prepared his farewell address to our fledgling nation. 

In that address, which Washington wrote with the help of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, Washington both blessed and warned the United States, counseling citizens to be wary of the forces that he knew would threaten our republic.  He was, in particular, wary of the rise of a particular kind of human being who would sabotage the country from within.  

Be wary, Washington wrote, of those who set us against one another, who rule only for their own faction, who usurp the powers of other branches of government, and who ignore the law when it's advantageous to do so.  Watch out for an oversized military, said the first Commander in Chief, and be particularly alert for the self-serving actions of "cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men" who see partisanship and populism as a way around the constraints of both virtue and the Constitution.

A well-crafted exhibit that centers Washington's wisdom and his hard-learned cautions might be a timely thing, eh?

To that end, you can read the farewell address at the link above.  I've drawn out a few key quotes from that address for your perusal and edification.  This being 1796, the language he, Hamilton, and Madison used is a little more convoluted that we're used to, but it's worth taking time to listen to his warnings.  They'd work well in an exhibit, I think:

1) A Warning Against those who foment Cynicism

"The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so; for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad, of your safety, of your prosperity, of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national Union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned, and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts."

2) A Reminder that a Bloated Military is a Threat to Liberty

"While then every part of our country thus feels an immediate and particular interest in union, all the parts combined cannot fail to find in the united mass of means and efforts greater strength, greater resource, proportionably greater security from external danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace by foreign nations; and, what is of inestimable value! they must derive from union an exemption from those broils and wars between themselves, which so frequently afflict neighboring countries not tied together by the same government; which their own rivalships alone would be sufficient to produce, but which opposite foreign alliances, attachments, and intrigues would stimulate and embitter. 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. In this sense it is, that your Union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other."

3) A Warning against "Designing Men" who Turn Region Against Region

"In contemplating the causes which may disturb our Union, it occurs as matter of serious concern that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing parties by geographical discriminations—Northern and Southern—Atlantic and Western; whence designing men may endeavor to excite a belief that there is a real difference of local interests and views. One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heart burnings which spring from these misrepresentations. They tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection."

4) A Reminder that Government must Serve All the People, Not Just a Subgroup

"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."

5)  Those who Ignore the Law or Manipulate it to Serve their Power are an Existential Threat

"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 triumphs of 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 the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."

6)  Radical Partisanship Destroys National Unity

"I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally. This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness and is truly their worst enemy. 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. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent 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."

7)  A "Unitary Executive" is the Path to Despotism and Tyranny

"..the habits of thinking 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. A just estimate of that love of power and proneness to abuse it which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositories and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern, some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them. If in the opinion of the people the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed."

8)  The United States must be a Good and Virtuous Neighbor 

"Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all—religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that in the course of time and things the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it? Can it be, that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?"

---

"In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish—that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. But if I may even flatter myself that they may be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good, that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism—this hope will be a full recompense for the solicitude for your welfare, by which they have been dictated."

Ask Not What You Can Do For Your Country

Are we at war?  Were we at war?  It's hard to tell.

News flows moment to moment, endlessly panicked, breathless, and reactive.  But if you step outside, and turn off your phone, there's not even the whiff of war.  America remains oblivious and untouched, except for a modest bump upwards in the price of gas.  There aren't shortages.  Sirens and alerts don't sound, and distant columns of smoke don't rise lazily upwards in the bright spring sky.

Nothing, nothing at all, is asked of us.  Not a thing.  

When republics go to war, citizens are generally expected to pitch in.  Grow a garden. Reduce your consumption, so the troops don't have to go without.  Be alert, at least.  But none of that is true.

Out in my garden, amongst my other garden flair...sleeping gnomes, umbrella-wielding Totoros, windmills, and the like...there's a sign from another time.  It's a bit of tin, upon which is printed a call to Garden for Victory, as so many Americans once did.  I do that, all the time, because it is, as the sign says, "thrifty and patriotic."   It's hard to be a patriot these days, because patriotism in a republic requires more than blind obedience.  Still, doing the right thing is doing the right thing.  

We are, for now, in the midst of our second war in less than five months.  We are overthrowing a monstrous regime,  but we're also not, and we're going to obliterate them, while letting them sell oil at huge profits to support their war effort, and we're killing and existentially threatening their leadership, while at the same time expecting them to negotiate.  

Given the gibbering incoherence of our addled leadership, a sentient citizen must come to their own conclusions.  Iran is, obviously, a war over oil, because the common-sense through-line between Venezuela and Iran is control over fossil fuel resources. 

And so, as I would if we were still a decent and honorable republic, I'm using less fuel, because that seems like the thing a citizen would do if they were patriotic.  It's what my grandparents did.

Yesterday, in the heat of a false summer, I did all of my necessary travelling on my scooter.  To church, and back, and then to celebrate a little one's birthday with some old friends.   The roads were full of traffic, heavy with Americans rushing about, as we always are, fat with SUVs and pickup trucks.  It was just an ordinary Sunday.

Because nothing, nothing at all, is asked of us, other than to keep spending money, not asking questions, and carrying on as if nothing is happening.

On How to Love America

It was the third of July, and I was in the Grand Ole Opry, listening to Country music.  Enjoying it, even, though it's not generally my thing.

In the last set, a new singer was brought out, a little coltish dude with a breakout hit single about boats and trucks and beer, whose guitar hung down like an oversided decorative necklace.  He started in with the obligatory opening crowd-connect patter by uttering the words, "I love America."

No context, no build up, no lead-in, no explanation as to why, just "I love America."  There was much hooting and hollerin', it being America and all.

That got me to thinking, as I drove the ten hours back from Nashville through the heart of the deep South on the Fourth of July, about what it means to love your country.

I mean, seriously think about it, because Lord, did I have some time on my hands.

And as I thought, I reflected on love of country through the lens I'd bring to all other forms of love, and with the the things I'd say to a couple in relationship counseling.  Because while most Americans will *say* they love America, that love may not be the healthiest of loves.

Love, you see, requires you to love the whole person in front of you.  The actual person, the real, complicated, messy and imperfect person.  We do not want to do this.

Some of us would rather love the person who once was.  We want to love that person we fell in big dreamy love with ten years ago, and not the less dreamy person who's standing in front of us right now.  We want to love the one who lived for us and us alone, our best friend and lover, and not this harried distant soul who's juggling a million responsibilities and the weight of life.  We want to love that little angel-baby who never cried and never got sick, our selective memory of big eyes and cheeks and heart-melting smiles.  We do not want to love the frustrating fourteen year old who is sitting and furtively snapchatting to their friends about what a [expletive deleted] we are.

When the person we love is a person they no longer are, and maybe never were, then we do not love them.

This is how conservatives do not love America.

Then there's the love of what might be.  "I love you for who you're going to be," we say to our lover, "once I've remade you."  "You're just so messed up," we say to them.  "But I just know I can save you and make you who you need to be."  Oh Lord, if someone ever says this to you, you need to run like H-E-double toothpicks.   Because tempting as it is to be the white knight, the one who comes in and fixes and saves and makes it all right, that ain't love.  What we love then is the sense of power that tearing down gives us.  We love deconstructing for the sake of deconstructing, and that leads us to seek out faults rather than possibilities, flaws rather than living hopes.

When the person we love is only the person we want to make them into, we do not love them.

This is how progressives do not love America.

To love a person, you need to love the whole of who they are.  That means their past, their whole-truth story to date, with all of its triumph and tragedy, all of its success and mess.  You have to love their potential, which rises from the grace notes of that story in all of its complexity.

And you have to love them right now, in that ephemeral place where the told and the yet-untold meet.

That's how we love people, if we really love them.  And that love, truth be told, is the love that heals and transforms for the better.

I'm reasonably sure love of country ain't so different.

Flag Etiquette

I had a very American fourth.  The family and I spent the weekend off in Hershey, Pennsylvania, enjoying a few days of amusement park/water park/chocolate-gorging indulgence.  We went from bucketing around on mild-concussion-inducing old wooden coasters to being aaaaaaaaieeee launched four stories straight up to walking slowly through a vast garden of roses.  We watched the fireworks display that night from a still-warm parking lot, with a random and rainbow-hued mix of Americans.

It was quite pleasant, although even all that park-walking didn't prevent a slight increase around my midsection.  

As we pulled back into our driveway, there was a small American flag stuck in the ground at the entrance.  It had been left by our local realtor, an "8" by 12" Economy U.S. Flag," a red-white-and-blue reminder that if we're thinking of selling our house, or know anyone who is...well...  

We get these inexpensive bits of Americana now and again, and add them to a collection of flags we keep in our basement, including the several that flew in our front yard along with those in all the yards in our neighborhood during the months after the attack on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.  One house in our subdivision was missing a mom after that day.  

On the new little flag was a set of instructions on flag care and etiquette, which I read just because it was there.  It was standard stuff.  Here are the days to fly the flag.  Here is the Pledge of Allegiance, along with Pledge Protocols.  Nothing unusual.  Until I hit these two sentences:

"The flag is not an inanimate object.  It flies freely with a life force powerful enough to unite an entire nation."

Purple prose above the fruited plain is not uncommon in patriotic literature.  But this was an odd thing, peculiarly animistic to the point of almost sounding mid-20th Century Shinto. 

Of course the flag is an inanimate object.  If it moves, it is only because the wind moves.  If it has life, it is only because there is a republic of free citizens who wave it.  The American flag that sits forever still on the moon would be meaningless to an alien probe that arrived to explore that rocky world and the asteroid-shattered, lifeless main planet around which it orbited.

It's only two sentences on a card on a mass-produced adflag, so I suppose it matters not.

Still, it needled me.  Perhaps it's just my reflexive Calvinist resistance to any and all forms of idolatry.  Even...and especially...the ones that stir us.