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Washington’s Farewell Address first appeared publicly on September 19, 1796. Washington characterized his address as “the disinterested warnings of a parting friend, who can possibly have no personal motive to bias his counsel.” He warned his countrymen to expect “the batteries of internal and external enemies” to be directed against the country. He exhorted his fellow citizens to preserve their union to gain “greater security from external danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace by foreign nations,” and to avoid civil wars. Anticipating Eisenhower’s warning issued more than a century and a half later, Washington noted the danger 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.” Washington also warned that “love of power and proneness to abuse it . . . predominates in the human heart.” His view of human nature informed his counsel on foreign policy.
You can read the entire speech here:
https://www.loc.gov/resource/mgw2.024/?sp=229&st=text
“I will only say that I have, with good intentions, contributed towards the organization and administration of the government the best exertions of which a very fallible judgment was capable.”
-George Washington, Farewell Letter
In recent days, from Birmingham to Tower Hamlets, ordinary British and English people have, seemingly spontaneously, started to raise Union Jack and St George’s flags on lampposts and buildings. Some have even painted flags on roundabouts.
Shortly afterwards, however, local council workers quickly began taking down the flags, arguing the “unauthorised items” were “dangerous”, on the basis they might distract and even kill passing motorists and pedestrians.
Yet many, understandably, see glaring hypocrisy.
While the Labour-run council in highly-diverse Birmingham is now rushing to take down English and Union flags, it has left Palestinian flags flying for months (for its part, in what is another depressing insight into the dire state of modern Britain, the council says it needs police protection to remove Palestine flags in Muslim areas).
At the same time, Birmingham council is pulling down Union Jack and St George’s flags while seemingly having no issue lighting the ...
“With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.”
George Washington, Farewell Address, on the liberties won by the American colonists through war
