Are The People Who "Believe In" George Washington Somehow Better Americans Than the Rest Of Us?
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Newt Gingrich was a guest on the Maria Bartiromo show on Fox News Business this morning and this is part of what he said
..... I think what is hard for most of us to accept, is that the anti-American left would love to drown traditional classic Americans with as many people that know nothing of American history, nothing of tradition, nothing of rule of law. You look at the radical left (trying) to get rid of the rest of us because we believe in George Washington or we believe in the Constitution, and you see this behavior over and over again.
what does "we believe in George Washington" mean?
I believe in George Washington if it means "did he exist" "was he a leader of the American Revolution" against Britain, "was he the first president of the United States" ?
I believe yes to all that, but i am pretty sure Gingrich means something beyond that when he says "we believe in George Washington" .
I am by no means an expert on George Washington but I did read a full biography of him one time and have read numerous other things about him over the years. He was a fairly meticulous businessman who ran a successful business on thousands of acres of Virginia farm land. When he was young his main ambition was to become an officer in the British army. When that didnt pan out he dedicated himself to his farming business. Because he had a fair amount of military experience and was a prominent man in his colony he was offered and became the Commander in Chief of the Continental Army during the duration of the Revolutionary War. He later accepted the honor of being the first president of the United States and is given great credit for establishing a lasting consensus that America would be a republic and not fall back into a monarchy or some other aristocratic system.
So I have some admiration of George Washington, but I dont see him as a mythic figure on some American Mt Olympus.
This is a man who owned slaves all his adult life and never did get around to freeing them until after his death.
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George Washington Never Set a Single Slave Free in His ...
George Washington never set a single slave free during his life. Only after his and his wife’s death were those slaves that he owned allowed their freedom. The majority of Mt. Vernon’s bondsmen were dowry slaves and as such, remained slaves for life.
I think Gingrich wants us to "believe in" Washington in the sense that what was created in 1776 and in the Constitution ( defacto traditional white European rule) should be preserved , then , now, and forevermore.
We dont need George Washington to revere the Constitution, he didnt even write any of it. Gingrich wants us to believe in George Washington for more elemental reasons.
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Do you "believe in George Washington" ?
at what was created in 1776 and in the Constitution ( defacto traditional white European rule) should be preserved
Do you imagine the possibility exists that someone can express admiration for a founder of this country without it being code for white supremacy?
Anything's possible.
George Washington died 222 years ago.
German Shepard dogs were sicced on civil rights protesters 56 years ago. Yet we are told that was too long ago to mean much today.
People are told they shouldnt bring up slavery because it was way too long ago for anyone to care about. Slavery continued for 66 years after George Washington died and legalized racial discrimination for 166 years.
George Washington died 222 years ago.
He's the most important American, ever. Lincoln is the only other person in the conversation. TO get offended that he's discussed is like getting mad at referencing Steve Jobs when discussing Apple.
Slavery continued for 66 years after George Washington
So what? No one references George Washington to argue for reinstating slavery. Can anyone be referenced favorably who existed before 1964? Do favorable mentions of FDR incense you so much?
I've never heard anyone suggest people need to "believe in" FDR.
As far as Washington being the most important American - why? And even if he is there are a hundred right behind him.
This is 2021. Why should people be worshiping someone who died 222 years ago?
It is not about GW, it is about what "traditional" people assume he represents.
Not exactly. Thomas Paine, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin were. Washington was an excellent general and a competent President, but the idea of independence was conceived by these men.
More or less, with the caveat that he was an ordinary man attempting extraordinary things. As the author of the article says, I am certainly no expert on Washington, but what I do know leads me to believe he was a good man, generally, given the times and attitudes. I make an idol of no man, however. I am aware that he had is faults, as I am sure he himself would tell us. I can applaud his stand against tyranny while, at the same time, wonder how such a man could not see the tyranny inherent in slave ownership or not do something about it if he did see it. In the end, I see him as just a man, like any of us. He did good and bad, like any of us. I won't cast him as either angel or devil.
Washington is considered our greatest President in part because he set the precedent for the peaceful transfer of power we saw as tradition up till Trump.
Washington presided over the establishment of an executive branch and a national government that has remained consistently similar in roles and responsibilities down through the decades and centuries. He wanted to create that consistency and that is one of his great successes.
And this also. The Constitution being a document that also upheld slavery and many other inequities was also brilliantly tooled with the mechanisms to rectify those inequities. That is brilliance.
Not without a civil war.
And that only because a segment of the nation abandoned The Constitution. Kind of like MAGA of the 1860's.
Indeed. And not faulting Washington--instead admiring him. However, the goal of the revolution was to extricate the blood rulers of English monarchy---replacing that governmental structure with a structure built on land ownership equated into wealth.
Not true at all. The only requirement in most states was the voter be out of debt and have a nominal positive net worth. the idea being that those with some minimal amount of property (not land) would be independent and have an investment in the community. As the Journal of the Early Republic put it, "the right to vote had always been extraordinarily widespread—at least among adult white males—even before the country gained its independence."
False.
That is false:
1789
1791
1792
1798
Newt Gingrich? Really?
The desperation of the left has drifted into the paranormal.
Ignorance of American cultural tradition can't be rationalized with misanthropic cynicism. George Washington, the man, became the embodiment of an ideal. The same thing happened with Martin Luther King, Jr. MLK, the man, became the embodiment of an ideal.
I really dont have anything against George Washington , other than his owning slaves and his less than decent treatment of the natives ( he wanted to have them assimilated into white culture, but if they refused they would be wiped out.) My objection to "believing in" Washington has more to do with the way modern day conservatives fetishize the founding fathers and the founding era, and in doing so misrepresent a lot of American history.
Confusing the man with the ideal is why a statement like 'believe in George Washington' is beyond the comprehension of much of today's political activism. Attacking George Washington, the man, is perceived as an attack on the ideal of America.
The attacks on George Washington are comparable to associating Black cultural tradition with watermelons, tar babies, and Sambo.
He is a regular guest on right wing media programs, so somebody wants him to have his say.
Why is it suddenly the most thing important about historical figures is how they treated blacks?
Or enslaved them to support a Southern Antebellum Oligarchy based on a determining factor of land ownership.
It wouldnt be if they had treated them well.
To answer your question in one word, yes!