By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:
Today is President Day, and not to dis Mr. Lincoln, but this blog will take this opportunity to praise George Washington. As our first President he oversaw the creation of one of the great startup ideas-the first modern democracy.
The position of president of the United States seemed shaped by the Federal Convention on the assumption that Washington would be the first to occupy the office. In a day when executive power was suspect – when the creation of the presidency, as Alexander Hamilton observed in The Federalist, was “attended with greater difficulty” than perhaps any other – the Constitution established an energetic and independent chief executive. Pierce Butler, one of the Founding Fathers, noted that the convention would not have made the executive powers so great “had not many of the members cast their eyes toward General Washington as President, and shaped their ideas of the Powers to be given a President, by their opinions of his Virtue.”
Washington’s Farewell Address (issued as a public letter in 1796) was one of the most influential statements of American political values Drafted primarily by Washington himself, with help from Hamilton, it gives advice on the necessity and importance of national union, the value of the Constitution and the rule of law, the evils of political parties, and the proper virtues of a republican people. While he declined suggested versions[that would have included statements that morality required a “divinely authoritative religion,” he called morality “a necessary spring of popular government”. He said, “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.”
So instead of just thinking of Presidents Day as an opportunity to buy a washing machine on sale, think of it as a salute to our first president. Had a different man held the office this country would be a very different place and almost certainly we would not still be enjoying the freedoms first overseen by Washington over 220 years ago.
, president of the united states , presidents day
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