Washington’s Dilemma
Sunday, August 14th, 2011
HIS EXCELLENCY by Joseph Ellis (author of Founding Brothers) has proven a wonderful book this summer as I have not been a real student of George Washington. As I near the section on his election as president, I was enamored w/ his dilemma over how strong the new central gov’t must become in order to guide the young free country w/o resorting to the despotism of Caesar’s Rome or Cromwell’s England. This issue has continued to plague our Republic, and is now on the verge of destroying it. That is what makes the passages so poignant.
“The real problem, which Washington came to recognize only gradually, was… a deep-rooted suspicion of gov’t power that severely limited the authority of the Continental Congress…. the Congress made itself vulnerable to the same criticism that the colonies had directed at Parliamt itself. The central impulse of the American Revolution had been a deep aversion to legislation, especially taxes, emanating from any consolidated gov’t in a faraway place beyond the direct control and supervision of the citizens affected…. delegates gathered in Philadelphia were distant creatures who could not tax [colonists in Virginia, Massachusetts, and other colonies] any more than could the House of Commons in London. ” (126) Washington gave little thought to these questions until after the War For Independence.
Suspicion of strong-gov’t and aversion to taxation from distant central gov’t were foundational principles of our Republic. God bless those Founding Fathers. It is the Tea Party Movement that seems to arousing those fears in Americans today. If it stays true to these principles, then America might yet regain its constitutional foundation and become fiscally strong and free for our posterity.
“Only a more powerful central gov’t, he believed, could secure the gains made by the American Revolution, but it would probably require a crisis to make it happen. “I believe all things will come out right at last,” he observed..’” but like a young heir, come a little prematurely to a large inheritance, we shall… run riot until we have brought our reputation to the brink of ruin.” In effect, things had to get worse before they could get better; or as he put it, “the people must feel before they will see.” (150)
Washington was no Madison or Jefferson; and remember he is merely calling for a stronger Union that that provided in the Articles of Confederation. The Constitution established a Republic with a federal system, checks and balances, and the Bill of Rights. Since 1933, the scales have swung the other way and the Central gov’t has usurped authority on issues meant for the states. The Federal Reserve, the Military Industrial Complex, the Council on Foreign Relations, have through both political parties established great centralized power over the economy and foreign policy of the United States w/ little or no input of the electorate. God help our people to become more educated on the issues. Less interest in traditional political parties and more focus on ideologies (Conservative, Constitutional, and Christian vs. Socialist, Internationalist, and Multicultural) is what the day demands. God help us find statesmen again like those of the past…
