Farewell from a President

“There’s nothing new in human nature. The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.” That’s a quote from former President Harry Truman. Evidently, there’s a lot of history that we don’t know, or choose to ignore. And failing to learn from history, we see the fateful results.

So maybe it’s time to learn from an even more famous President, George Washington. It was 1796, at the end of Washington’s second term as President. Commander in Chief of the military during the Revolutionary War, George Washington was our country’s first President. Choosing not to run for a third term in office, Washington wrote a letter to the country. His warnings to the young United States should be heeded by us over 200 years later.

So what were our first President’s chief concerns in his letter? His main warnings were: 1) Don’t get entangled with foreign countries 2) Avoid national debt 3) Don’t let political parties control the country and 4) Don’t forget the importance of religion to the welfare of the country. Sounds like advice for our country today.

Don’t get entangled with foreign countries. Just a few years away from the war with England, the U.S. was now facing conflict with France. Thomas Jefferson promoted an alliance with France while Alexander Hamilton leaned more toward more reconciliation with England. President Washington wanted neither. He wrote, “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world…”

Avoid national debt. He knew the tendencies of government to borrow. But he knew it must be used sparingly. He wrote that we must “…cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible…avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt … it is essential that you…bear in mind, that towards the payments of debts there must be Revenue, that to have Revenue there must be taxes; that no taxes can be devised, which are not…inconvenient and unpleasant…” I wonder what he would think about our $31 trillion national debt we have today. Was “trillion” even a word in 1796?

Don’t let political parties control the country. The website, Mt. Vernon.org, describes the political world of Washington’s time. “Political parties, as we know them today, began to take shape while Washington was in office. By 1793, there was an emerging split between two distinct visions for the future of the country. They would form the nucleus of a formal, concerted opposition party, something that frightened many people, including Washington.”

Washington wrote, “However 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.” I didn’t know, that along with being “The Father of Our country,” George Washington could see the future that is today, and the damage political parties have done.

Don’t forget the importance of religion to the welfare of our country. Washington wrote, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” Washington knew that without the principles set forth by religion, the concept of right and wrong would be without standards, and then become subject to the wants and desires of individuals.

The problems George Washington pointed out in his farewell address to the young United States in 1796 seems to be much the same today in 2023. Except we are now much more entangled with foreign countries, like Ukraine. We are much, much more in debt as a nation, the two political parties are dividing us for their own advantage, and religion is now often considered irrelevant to today’s culture.

By the way, history tells us that world powers have seldom lasted more than two hundred years. We can learn a lot from history.