Look around. What do you see? We are afflicted with a disease – internal disaffections, uncorrected misunderstandings, intentional misinterpretations, lack of appreciation for history. We act like adolescents, elect adolescent leaders. The pillars of our republic quiver. George Washington would be aghast. A republic is hard work, requires unity or perishes. Simple but hard.
As a Nation, and most know this, our Founders were Christian. They believed in free will, pledged tolerance of all faiths, “Hebrews” to “Mohammedans,” if they respected others’ freedoms and were of “good conscience,” what Ben Franklin called a “continual Christmas.”
But today, we have lost that horizon, what our founders envisioned and why. We have lost our compass, and few – literally or figuratively – can navigate by the stars, see the joy in a “good conscience.” We forget what it means to seek that joy, being patient with the misguided, educating those unaware of our extraordinary history.
Instead, we give in to political exhaustion, meet disaffection with disaffection, pull our sword and cross it, rather than deploy a shield, keep eyes on the far horizon: Preserving the Republic.
Where does a society end up – from the Greeks and Romans to Carthaginians and Phoenicians (both Semitic), Sumerians and Akkadians (both Mesopotamians) – when it fails to educate itself, keep the compass, restore perspective for those who have lost it?
It ends up lost, internally weakened, and then worse things can happen. None of the societies above … still exist. They had their day and flamed out, got weak from internal division, and fell.
True, they did not have our founders, were not centered on Christian and pluralist ideas. They did not share our commitment to limited government, contesting ideas, forgiveness, self-correction.
Those societies, early Egyptians to Babylonians, had no grasp of the strength that resides in tolerating differing ideas, trial and error, self-correction through self-awareness. So, they fell.
Missing today is what our founders had – fortitude, patience, and understanding forged in the furnace of war, two wars in 40 years that nearly ended it. In 1776 and 1812, they nearly lost it all, so they appreciated what they had. They knew self-correction was worth the effort.
So, what would Washington say? Maybe what he wrote in 1783: “Essential to the well-being, to the existence of the United States… is prevalence of that pacific and friendly disposition among the People … which will induce them to forget their local prejudices … to make those mutual concessions which are requisite to the general prosperity.”
More: “These are the pillars on which the glorious fabric of our Independency and National Character must be supported; liberty is the basis, and whoever would dare to sap the foundation, or overturn the structure, under whatever special pretexts … will merit the bitterest execration…”
Final paragraph, speaking to the American people: “I now make it my earnest prayer that God would have you and the State over which you preside in His holy protection … that He would incline the hearts of the Citizens to cultivate a spirit … to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow Citizens … particularly for their brethren who have served in the field …”
Handing back command, Washington asks that God “…graciously be pleased to dispose us all … to do Justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that Charity, humility and pacific temper of mind, which were the Characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed Religion…,” because “without … these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation.”
Three years later, Washington writes friend John Jay, hopeful but worried. He insists the society must bind their differences. People must step up, since forging and holding a republic is hard.
“There are errors in our National Government which call for correction, loudly … We are certainly in a delicate situation …” but “the people are not yet sufficiently misled to retract from error!”
Washington, still four years away from chairing the Constitutional Convention (1787), six from becoming president (1789) is calm … but also worried for America’s future, so is engaged.
“To be plainer, I think there is more wickedness than ignorance …” and a Convention “is necessary to revise … the Articles of Confederation,” as “something must be done or the fabric must fall. It is certainly tottering! Ignorance and design are hard to combat. Out of these proceed illiberality… evils which oftentimes, in a republican government, must be sorely felt before they must be removed.”
While Washington’s appeal to common sense, social unity, and flexibility is heard, he holds certain principles firm, which will become – with others – part of our Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Washington’s real point was simple – and relevant. Republics are hard work. They require education, understanding of freedom, unity in its defense. The idea was shared by all founders.
As Franklin noted, “We must all hang together, or we will surely hang separately.” In short, we are afflicted now by ignorance, indifference, fatigue. We must still step up, vote, care. Simple but hard.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.