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Bucky

(53,795 posts)
Sat Mar 18, 2023, 05:14 AM Mar 2023

The "Spirit of Party" warning in George Washington's farewell address


Washington's final warning to the country was exactly over behaviors like what the Maga wing of the Republican Party is indulging in today: Americans becoming so opposed to fellow Americans' ideas that they get lured into belief in and loyalty to a foreign nation's manipulation. We can and should disagree with each others' ideas and proposals for how to run our shared government. That's the essence of the democracy that's sustained and enhanced our Republic for two centuries. But that argument was always needed to stop at our borders. When connected to matters overseas we should all be bound to support the national interest and never turn against each other to support a foreign faction or interest.

In 1789 Washington was warning against the Republicans' loyalty to revolutionary French propaganda and even fellow Federalists' attachment to British commercial interests, both at the expense of fealty to the American Republic. One constant in US history is many of us fall and fall short of the American ideal, except in the area of bickering with one another.

And I'll be honest with you, there's really nothing wrong with an American party saying 'We should have a more isolationist foreign policy' or 'America shouldn't take sides in foreign wars, especially against nuclear powered foes.' I disagree with those ideas in the case of Ukraine, but they are perfectly legitimate ideas to put out and argue for. Those arguments by themselves aren't disloyalty.

What some Maga Republicans today are doing however does cross the line: falling for Russian propaganda and its anti-free press & anti-democracy policies. They mimic Putin's Christian nationalism, buy into his denial of Ukrainian identify (I even saw a republican congressman on TV a couple of weeks ago refer to Ukraine as "the borderlands"!), and find common cause with him in ginning up hatred against gays and transsexuals--favoring denying fundamental constitutional rights to fellow Americans based on their own personal dislikes.

I remember a few years ago noting the number of Republicans at their national convention sporting "country before party" hats, which is honestly a great slogan and should apply to all of us. But that slogan sitting square on Republican heads seems shockingly empty today. This faction is willing to buy any lie from Russia or denounce any American law enforcement official who prosecutes the anti-democracy activities so long as the criminals are from the Republican Party.

It's technically not treason if it's not an act carried out for the enemy in a war. But it is a core treachery to the principles of our country and a categorical disloyalty to the constitutional mandate that we maintain a republican form of government in all of the United States.
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The "Spirit of Party" warning in George Washington's farewell address (Original Post) Bucky Mar 2023 OP
I read the farewell address as required reading murielm99 Mar 2023 #1
Excellent essay, except I think it was Whigs back then? raging moderate Mar 2023 #2
Democratic-Republicans ITAL Mar 2023 #7
K&R 2naSalit Mar 2023 #3
I wonder what the Republican party thinks about men wearing wigs today Meadowoak Mar 2023 #4
And you know who helped to write that? BumRushDaShow Mar 2023 #5
Republican leaders have violated every one of Washington's warnings about the nation. Lonestarblue Mar 2023 #6

murielm99

(30,656 posts)
1. I read the farewell address as required reading
Sat Mar 18, 2023, 06:54 AM
Mar 2023

in high school and again in college. I never forgot it.

raging moderate

(4,281 posts)
2. Excellent essay, except I think it was Whigs back then?
Sat Mar 18, 2023, 07:40 AM
Mar 2023

The Republican Party didn't exist yet. I read somewhere that Abraham Lincoln was a Whig until some time in the 1850s, when the Republican Party was founded.

ITAL

(619 posts)
7. Democratic-Republicans
Sat Mar 18, 2023, 09:37 AM
Mar 2023

And at the time, they often just called themselves Republicans (or Jeffersonians). This party eventually morphed into the Democrats by the time of Andrew Jackson.

Meadowoak

(5,517 posts)
4. I wonder what the Republican party thinks about men wearing wigs today
Sat Mar 18, 2023, 08:02 AM
Mar 2023

Even though it was (whigs) their own party.

Lonestarblue

(9,880 posts)
6. Republican leaders have violated every one of Washington's warnings about the nation.
Sat Mar 18, 2023, 08:09 AM
Mar 2023

Washington warned that the people must remain unified in support of the nation, avoid party factions and voting for party over country, and avoid being influenced by foreign powers. Yet that is exactly what has happened to the US over the past forty+ years—all brought about through extensive Republican propaganda solely geared toward transferring all power to wealthy white men. Never would Washington have believed that a man so craven and so devoid of moral behavior as Trump could become president or that almost the entire party’s leaders are just the same. This paragraph from History.com describes Republicans perfectly.

“When Americans voted according to party loyalty, rather than the common interest of the nation, Washington feared it would foster a “spirit of revenge,” and enable the rise of “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men” who would “usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterwards the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

https://www.history.com/news/george-washington-farewell-address-warnings

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