George Washington Responds

Posted by James Manship on January 17, 2011 under Why | Be the First to Comment

[James Renwick Manship, Sr. is the author of the 2010 “Second to None: America’s Washington”, and “A Civil Air for America: An Eagle Eye View of George Washington’s Boyhood Rules of Civility” in 2008. Formerly a Member of the Board of Visitors of Mount Vernon with the father of Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, for over a dozen years Manship has been one of America’s foremost Living Historians of George Washington. This was written in response to the display of historical ignorance by Ron Chernow on the pages of the New York Times.]

Like few movements in American History, the Tea Party movement has demonstrated both impact and staying power. Staying power is shown from the Ron Paul supporters March on Washington in July 2008 to the 9-12 Rally in 2009, to a similar event in November 2009, to the ObamaCare Protest Rally in March 2010, the Tax Tyranny Day Rally at the Washington Monument on April 15th, to the Glenn Beck Restoring Honor Rally on 8-28, to the 9-11 Patriots March up Constitution Avenue, and the 9-12 March on the Capitol from the Washington Monument. One George Washington Living Historian was at most events and is in the NY Times photos by Drew Angerer reading a Bible passage (Psalm 37) to the Citizens assembled. GW also calls for UPROAR Unite Patriots Recover Our American Republic.

And the “Staying Power” is not confined to the City of Washington, but seen in Rallies All Across America. “Impact” is shown “Sea to Shining Sea” by the Primary Election defeats of “RINO Republicans” such as Murkowski of Alaska, Bennett of Utah, to Castle of Delaware and other Tea Party supported candidates. Democrats are shivering in fear of what General Election Day may bring. All together, millions and millions of Americans are getting up and getting out to protest both party’s Elites in Government ignoring their wishes. “No more!” Voting Citizens uproar.

Before George Washington was elected President, before a single state had ratified “this Constitution for the United States of America”, GW wrote on 10 November 1787 to a future Justice of the U.S. supreme Court, his nephew Bushrod Washington

(as quoted on page 30 of “Second to None: America’s Washington”): “The power under the Constitution will always be in the people. It is entrusted for certain defined purposes, and for a certain limited period, to representatives of their own choosing; and whenever it is executed contrary to their interest, or not agreeable to their wishes, their servants can, and undoubtedly will, be recalled.”

Thus it is clear to see that the Tea Party Patriots of today are following the Prophetic Vision of the “father of His country”, George Washington.

Also to be noted, President Washington signed his letters as “Your Most Humble & Obedient Servant,” a far cry from the modern obsession with “The Honorable” and “Elected Official”. What ever became of the title “Elected Servant”?

Truth is the Founding Fathers were positively Revolutionary, not Monarchists or Democrats. John Adams wisely described a Democracy as a “Mob-ocracy”. The Founding Fathers wisely agreed to create a Republic, as Benjamin Franklin related to the woman who inquired, and added: “…if you can keep it.” Can We keep it?

George Washington warned fellow Americans in his 1796 Farewell Address:

“Toward the preservation of your government… it is requisite… that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect in forms of the Constitution alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown.”

Many Tea Party Patriots see recent “Laws” passed by the Pelosi-Reid-Obama axis of power as dangerous “innovations upon its principles”, the key principles of this Constitution, yet in recent years are being indirectly overthrown. Washington wrote to Lincoln on June 29, 1788, “We may, now and then, get bewildered; but I hope and trust that there is good sense and virtue enough left to recover the right path.”

The Founding Fathers wanted both Balance of Powers, and, Separation of Powers, in both the Legislative Branch with the more populous House to balance the elite tendency of the Senate, and the Judicial Branch, with the Jury of Peers to balance the all too often tyrannical tendency of a Judge. Two of the Ten Bill of Rights, and part of Article III, speak to Jury Rights. Few Citizens today know its great value.

Virginia Appeals Court Judge Kelsey in an October 2004 Virginia Bar magazine article, shared that Thomas Jefferson wrote if faced with a choice of a vote in the Legislative Branch (through an elected servant, Senator or Representative), or a vote in the Judicial Branch (by direct votes in the Trial Jury, and the Grand Jury), he would choose to vote in the Judicial Branch, for it was far more important.

Jefferson would be appalled to learn that the Williamsburg based National Center for State Courts around 2003 issued a report showing a 24 per cent nationwide decline in Jury trials in the previous ten years. The 2008 “State of the Judiciary” by the Virginia Chief Justice shows a near 70 per cent decline in the previous 9 years. Those terrible numbers are like a Canary in a Coal Mine, showing the “Air of Liberty” is about to be snuffed out in our Courts, where Petitions for Redress of Grievances are by law supposed to be fairly heard.

Most teachers of this Constitution, in grade schools or law schools, define Balance of Powers being only between the three branches of the federal government, not also within the Legislative and Judicial Branches. Most also neglect to teach the Balance of State Power and People Power to limit Federal power, as wise Tea Party Patriots remind all Americans are preserved as Rights by the 10th and 9th Amendments, respectively, of our Bill of Rights.

General George Washington wrote to the grandfather of General George Washington Custis Lee, the father of General Robert E. Lee, and himself General “Light Horse Harry” Lee, on All Hallows’ Eve, 31 October 1786, near a year before the Constitution Convention, these wise words: “Precedents are dangerous things; let the reins of government then be braced and held with a steady hand, and every violation of the Constitution be reprehended: if defective, let it be amended, but not suffered to be trampled upon…”

Judges pride themselves on “Stare decisis”, meaning Precedent of prior Court Opinions rule in cases that follow. George Washington gave warning to such elite thinking of some judges, who in America today too often trample on this Constitution as they “legislate from the bench”.

The Republican Party of Jefferson was a party that reduced the size of the Federal government under Adams, so is the intellectual forefather of today’s Republican Party, NOT as the elite in academia wrongly claim, the big government, tax and spend, Democrat Party of America today.

Washington was concerned that this infant nation manage its commerce and pay its war debts, both duties that the national bank might well facilitate, so embraced Hamilton’s proposal.

Indeed, the Mount Vernon Conference of 1785 was for the purpose of coordinating commerce. Mount Vernon was the forerunner of the Annapolis Convention of 1786, and the Convention in 1787, where the “Miracle in Philadelphia” Constitution was given to America and the world by those fussy Founding Fathers.

Chernow’s word pair “spared savagely” is a bit excessive, or melodramatic to describe the exchange of Madison and Hamilton, two key writers of the Federalist Papers, yet forget not John Jay, first Chief Justice, who Presidential Historian Richard Norton Smith tells us attended church with President Washington. More savage was the pistol duel of Jefferson’s Vice President, Aaron Burr, who shot and killed Hamilton. Also forget not the “Anti-Federalist Papers”, that may more closely reflect the philosophy of smaller, limited government of modern Tea Party Patriots.

Every Citizen should presume that she or he knows this Constitution as well as any law school professor, any judge or any elected servant in the legislature, because that Citizen on the knee of their parents and grandparents had it read since childhood. Washington wrote: “A primary object… should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important, and what duty more pressing… than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country.”