President Washington’s Farewell Address to America as his Presidency was ending is considered the most important letter that has ever been written by a U.S. President in American history.
In fact, so much respect has been shown for Washington’s Farewell Address that every year since 1893 a U.S. Senator has been selected by the Senate to read Washington’s Farewell Address aloud to the entire Senate.
The key points of Washington’s address show amazing understanding and intuition about the challenges that America would face in the years to come, because the challenges that Washington predicted are the exact same challenges that we are currently facing.
Therefore, it would be very wise for us to listen to Washington’s words, and for us to find ways to display our self-discipline by following his advice.
Three of the most important concerns that Washington addressed in his speech were America’s military involvement against other countries, the importance of America not getting into national debt, and the threat of Our Country being very divided by political fighting and partisanship.
Washington’s advice about military involvement had seven main points. These were:
1) America should have a large enough military to discourage other countries from attacking us, but we should not overgrow or overspend on our military.
2) By America remaining united under an efficient government, then this will discourage other countries from attacking us.
3) America should set the perfect example of Freedom to the rest of the world, but we should not force our form of government and our opinions onto other countries. Instead, the other countries will want to follow us because of the perfect example for Freedom that we are setting.
4) America should remain neutral as much as we possibly can toward other countries, and not show either negative feelings or favoritism feelings toward another country. By staying neutral, then we will not create enemies that can cause war for us.
5) Washington wrote that if America treats another country with either a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness, then this can trap us into acting in ways that are not in our own best interests.
6) In addition, America should always remain neutral toward other countries because by not showing favoritism toward another country then we will not cause internal divisions within Our Own Country between Our Citizens who agree or disagree with our favoritism. Washington was concerned that these internal divisions could be exploited by foreign countries to divide America within itself, allowing the foreign countries to potentially take over parts or all of Our Country.
7) Washington believed that we needed to be in peace with all countries when he wrote, “Observe good faith and justice toward all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all.”
Washington’s advice about national debt included three primary points.
1) Washington wrote that America is stronger and more secure for its citizens when it does not have debt.
2) Washington agreed that America may get into short-term debt because of a situation like war, but that during peace time then we must make every effort to pay off this debt.
He wrote that America should avoid “the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertions in time of peace to discharge the debts.”
3) He believed that America should never leave debt to future generations, that every generation should take responsibility for the debt that it accumulated even if war caused the debt, and that every generation should pay off its own debt before leaving Our Country to Our next Generation. Washington wrote this by saying that one generation should not place “upon posterity the burden which ourselves ought to bear.”
Washington’s concern for political partisanship was especially important to him, and he made seven main points regarding this.
1) Washington said that America needed to make every effort to stay united by appreciating the immense value of our national union for collective and individual happiness.
2) Washington was concerned that geographical discrimination could cause people to turn against each other, instead of being bound together by fraternal affection.
3) He was concerned that these internal divisions would open up ways for foreign countries to exploit our divisions and divide us even further for the advantage of those countries.
4) Washington wrote that partisanship “agitates the community, and kindles the animosity of one part against another.” Potentially causing “riot and insurrection”.
5) Washington was also concerned that extreme partisanship could lead to an authoritarian government taking over that would destroy the Freedoms of Our American People.
6) Washington wrote that the disorders and unhappiness that result from extreme partisanship cause citizens to seek security and rest by giving “absolute power to an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.”
What Washington is referring to here is the threat of authoritarianism rising out of extreme partisanship.
7) Washington was concerned that if Our American People become worn down and tired of the political fighting, then Our People could become willing to give their freedom away to a skilled authoritarian politician, or to an in-the-right-place-at-the-right-time authoritarian politician, who promises to protect us and protect our survival from the dangerous political group on the other side.
And that is very much what we are seeing today, as I have written extensively about in other chapters on our website and in our book.
In these other chapters, I have written that when the people of a nation become very scared and fearful for their own security, then these people will sometimes choose to support authoritarianism because they become willing to give up their freedoms so they can feel like they are safer and more protected.
Throughout history, every time America and the World has been going through extreme situations, like the Civil War, the Great Depression, World War II, and like we are currently, then there has been a huge rise in authoritarian governments both in America and around the World.
Germany in the 1930’s leading up to World War II is a perfect example, where the German government made the German people so scared, including very scared about Jewish people, that the German people allowed the German government to do many awful things.
We currently have this authoritarianism happening in America, and many politicians are trying to increase their power by taking away more and more of your freedoms.
The current authoritarianism began with the fear that our society had during the Covid pandemic. This was a very justifiable fear because there was so much unknown about it.
But because the pandemic caused such a large amount of fear, then Americans did not know what to do, and so we looked to our political leaders for guidance and protection.
Throughout history, whenever fear has been at its highest, whether that fear was caused by war, or economic depressions, or pandemics, or when people have felt that their personal security was threatened, then people have been willing to give up their freedoms to government in order to feel more protected.
This fear and willingness for Americans to give up our freedoms for personal and family safety has resulted in opportunistic and power-hungry politicians choosing to take freedoms away from our American citizens.
An example of this authoritarian behavior is how some of our politicians took the following actions during the Covid pandemic.
1) Having people fired from their jobs unless they got vaccinated with a newly manufactured and not yet fully tested vaccine, that turned out to be nowhere near as effective as the government claimed the vaccine would be.
2) Not recognizing that natural immunity from previous infection was very valuable, and in some studies was shown to have longer-term protection than the vaccine, even though throughout world history, medicine and science have always known how natural immunity creates resistance to any virus or disease.
3) Not recognizing that our young people and children very rarely had serious symptoms from the virus, and so did not usually need to take the vaccine.
4) Publicly shaming and blaming people who chose not to take the vaccine because these people either considered themselves to have natural immunity, or thought they were too young to need the vaccine. This public shaming and blaming by our politicians incorrectly caused a large part of the division between our American People that we still see to this day.
5) Requiring the wearing of masks even though science had shown that masks were not effective.
6) Closing people’s businesses that caused many Americans to lose their businesses that they had worked so hard to build for many years.
7) Colleges and universities being supported by the politicians when they did not allow students to attend unless students were vaccinated.
8) The closing of public schools that harmed our children educationally, emotionally, and in many additional ways.
9) Only recognizing expensive and newly manufactured drugs as being effective against the virus, drugs that the government received royalty payments for.
And even prior to the vaccine being manufactured, not recognizing any older and much less expensive drugs as being potentially or partially effective.
10) Not acknowledging that the vitamin and mineral supplements Vitamin D and Zinc, and to a lesser degree Vitamin C, were very important in reducing serious symptoms.
11) Not acknowledging that it was good for people to be out in the sun so that people could naturally manufacture Vitamin D from the sun to protect themselves from serious symptoms.
12) Not acknowledging that exercise and physical fitness were beneficial in strengthening people’s resistance to the infection.
13) Putting forward their vaccine mandates without evaluating each person’s individual risk of getting serious symptoms from the virus compared to that person’s risk of getting potentially dangerous side effects from the vaccine.
14) Censoring the media and any social media that put forward opinions or facts that went against the government’s position that every person needed to get vaccinated, that everyone needed to wear a mask, and that there were no medicines other than the expensive, newly manufactured ones, like the vaccine, that were even partially effective.
These politicians took advantage of the nationwide pandemic fear to gain more power for themselves, and because their escalation of this fear worked so well for them, then following the pandemic they decided that generating fear in citizens is an effective way for them to stay in power or get into power.
As a result, the extreme fears these politicians are pushing now are climate change, racism, xenophobia, transgenderism, the loss of democracy, misinformation and censorship, political retribution, the soul of our Nation, the loss of our Country, the loss of the rights to have control of your own bodies, etc., etc.
All of these potential possibilities have some measure of risk, just like all possibilities for anything have some measure of risk no matter how small. And some of these fears are definitely areas for us to be concerned about and work to solve.
However, it is the extreme overexaggerating of all these threats by our politicians who want power that causes panic.
It is the extreme overexaggerating by our unethical politicians that causes our people to be willing to give up their freedoms and accept authoritarianism because our people think they are under so much immediate threat that they need to be protected by a ruler and by a ruling government.
As these exaggerated fears grow within Our American Citizens, then this causes unethical and power-hungry politicians to stoke the fear and use this fear to try to give themselves more power.
Our politicians who are unethical do not want to Work for You and Serve You like they are supposed to do, and instead they want to generate Authoritarianism and personal power for themselves so that their insecure and limited minds can feel like they are your rulers and your king.
In summary, there are many key points that Washington wrote in his Farewell Address that are crucially important to us during our current time period.
These key points are:
1) We need to have a strong military, but only for defense to deter countries from attacking us, and not for us to utilize for aggression against other countries.
2) We do not want to overspend and have troops stationed all over the world, especially since it is costing America nearly $1 Trillion a year for military spending. This money can instead be spent on helping our American people inside of America.
3) By not having troops stationed all over the world, then we are able to stay more neutral, which keeps other countries from considering us to be their enemy.
4) Whatever debt we incur during a period of war, then we should work very hard to pay it off during a period of peace. We should not continue to increase our debt during peacetime by spending on having our troops stationed all over the world.
In our current situation, we have $35 Trillion of debt, but our government continues to want to spend money on unnecessary things. America is headed toward a financial cliff because we are now spending $1 Trillion every year just to pay the interest on our debt, and at some point in the future soon, 100% of everything we collect in tax revenue is going to have to be paid to just pay the interest on our debt. This is obviously not sustainable, and America will end up like Greece or Venezuela unless we get firm control of our spending.
5) We want to set a perfect example of Freedom for other countries to follow us, but we do not want to force Our Democracy and Our Beliefs onto other countries. America has made this mistake many times.
6) We need to stay neutral with foreign countries and foreign conflicts as much as we can, not only to keep from creating enemies, but also to keep some of Our Own Citizens from disagreeing with our actions that would cause division within Our Own Country. We have recently made this mistake several times, all of which have put us into wars and very difficult positions both globally and within Our Own Country.
It is wise and right for us to communicate and work with other countries in a neutral way to try to settle conflicts before wars begin in those countries. However, we failed to do this between Ukraine and Russia, and we also failed to do this between Israel and Palestine and Iran.
We currently have two perfect examples of where our government should have been proactive and acted to solve the Russia-Ukraine war before it ever began, and where our government should have been proactive and acted to solve the war in the Middle East before it ever began.
We did not act as the Peacemaker on either occasion, and this lack of doing what we should have done as a Peacemaker has caused us and Our World serious problems.
We have caused Russia to become our enemy, which has caused other countries to side with Russia and become our enemies, and we have caused internal divisions within America because of the mistakes that our politicians made with the Israeli and Middle East war.
All of these serious problems could have been avoided by us acting as a Peacemaker to settle the disagreements before the wars began.
7) We need to eliminate the extreme partisanship that is being shown by our President and by our Congresspeople because this extreme partisanship is causing serious internal divisions within America that other countries are looking for an opportunity to take advantage of.
Our President and all our politicians need to begin to treat each other with Respect, Dignity, Kindness, Honesty, Thoughtfulness, and Understanding.
We need for our Presidents and for our Congresspeople to stop stoking the flames of fear that are causing Our American People to become so fearful that they are willing to give up our freedoms and be ruled by an authoritarian government that is the opposite of the democracy that America was founded upon.
We need for Our American Citizens to recognize and realize that these politicians are attempting to scare us with false and dishonest statements so that these politicians can give themselves the power of a dictator or a ruler. We need to realize that we are being manipulated and pushed toward authoritarianism and fascism by our politicians.
We do not realize we are being manipulated by unethical authoritarian politicians, just like the nice and kind German people in the 1930’s and 1940’s did not know they were being manipulated and pushed toward authoritarianism and fascism, either.
As we look to learn from the mistakes of Germany in the 1930’s, we want to ask ourselves if there are any clues from Germany that will help us to decipher our own current situation in America.
One clue is that authoritarianism can never be taken over by the minority because the minority will always get overruled by the majority. Therefore, authoritarianism can only be accomplished by the majority.
Likewise, authoritarianism can never be accomplished when a majority of the media outlets are against the authoritarian party. It can only be accomplished when the majority of the media outlets are in favor of the authoritarian party.
For example, if we look at another country in the world that has a dictator who we think is authoritarian, that dictator would not be in power unless he or she had a state media supporting the dictator that was larger than the media that was against the dictator.
Because it is only by the state media falsely influencing the majority of people that the dictator is able to stay in power.
If most of the media was against the dictator, then this larger amount of negative media coverage of the dictator would lead to a majority of the citizens being against the dictator, which would lead to the citizen majority either not voting for or overthrowing the dictator.
Therefore, if someone is acting like a dictator but is comfortably staying in power, then it can only be because the state media supporting the dictator has more viewers, listeners, and readers than the media does that is against the dictator.
Since fear in the citizens and the citizens’ search for protection and safety is what leads to authoritarianism, then another clue to uncovering and being able to recognize authoritarianism is to look at which political side is trying to scare you the most.
Because whichever political side is trying to scare you the most is the political party that is trying to take advantage of your fear to force authoritarianism, is the political party trying to take away your freedoms, and is the political party trying to take more power for themselves.
We have American People on both sides of the political debate. Some of Our Americans support our Democrat Party, and some of Our Americans support our Republican Party.
However, both of these groups of Our Americans do not think that their political party is authoritarian, and both groups of Our Americans think that the other political party is authoritarian.
However, since it is impossible for both political parties to be authoritarian and for both political parties to not be authoritarian at the same time, then one side of Our American People or both sides of Our American People have to be interpreting the situation incorrectly.
The facts are that there are very intelligent and reasonable people on both sides of this political argument.
Therefore, it is not logical that half of the intelligent and reasonable people are completely right, and half of the intelligent and reasonable people are completely wrong.
As a result, the only logical conclusion is that there must be something going on that both Democrats and Republicans are not recognizing.
What we are not realizing and appreciating is that we do not notice or recognize authoritarian behavior if it is done by our own political party because we are personally in agreement with the authoritarian policies that our party is requiring of us.
When we are in agreement with the policies that our own political party is pushing for, then we do not notice that those policies are also being pushed onto us because we have been convinced by our politicians and by our side of the media that these policies should be done.
Therefore, we do not feel like we are being pushed into doing something when we would choose to do these things by our own choice, anyway.
However, when we do not agree with the policies that other people are pushing onto us, then we see those people as forcing authoritarian policies onto us.
For instance, when you were in high school, if your parents, somewhat unreasonably, required that you went to bed at 8 pm, but you wanted to go to bed at 8 pm because you liked getting up very early in the morning, then you would not think your parents were making you go to bed at 8 pm.
However, if you liked to stay up until 10 pm so you could do other things that were important to you before you went to bed, then you would see your parents as being unreasonable and being authoritarian toward you.
Therefore, the truth is that each of us is not recognizing or noticing the authoritarian policies that our own party is pushing on us and on everyone because we agree with our side’s policies.
A perfect example is the vaccine requirement. If you believed what politicians and the media were telling you. If you thought that everyone getting the vaccine would make all of America immune and would keep you and everyone safe. If you thought that the vaccine was safe. If you thought that previous infection and natural immunity was not protective. And if you agreed with the vaccine requirement. Then you probably did not think that requiring people to take a newly manufactured vaccine in their bodies, and firing them if they did not take the vaccine, was authoritarian political behavior.
Therefore, if you believed all of these positive things about the vaccine, then you logically thought that requiring vaccines was common sense, and that anyone not getting the vaccine was being selfish because the unvaccinated person was a risk to you and to everyone.
But if you disagreed with the vaccine, if you believed that previous infection would create natural immunity like every disease throughout history has, if you did not think that the vaccine would stop the spread any more than natural immunity would, if you thought that you were not at risk because of your younger age, if you agreed to protect other people by not getting too close to them just in case you could spread something to them, and if you believed the politicians and media you watched that the vaccine had more risk than reward for you, then you saw forcing people to take the vaccine as authoritarian behavior.
Therefore, if you believed all of these negative things about the vaccine, then you logically thought that you already had immunity, that you were not a risk to anyone, that the vaccine was more of a risk to you than it was a reward for you, and that it was common sense for you to not take the vaccine.
As it turns out, the truth of the vaccine was somewhere in between these two viewpoints, which the truth always is. The truth about anything is always somewhere in the middle between the various viewpoints.
The vaccine did offer some protection, it needed regular booster shots every few months, it did somewhat reduce the spread of serious cases but did not stop the spread completely, there is a risk of occasional serious side effects with the vaccine, and it has been shown by medical studies that natural immunity from previously having the infection provides a good amount of protection.
Therefore, the decision should not have been as polarizing as it was because there was a very large amount of gray area with the facts.
The only reason it was so polarizing is because politicians were not being honest with us about the positives and about the negatives of the vaccines. Therefore, whichever newscast you watched caused you to think that what your group of politicians was telling you was 100% correct, and that the other political group was 100% wrong.
The bottom line of the vaccine situation is that we should not have been fighting among ourselves.
We were being manipulated by politicians and by political groups. Instead of being manipulated, we should have been seeking more truth and knowledge so that each of us could make the best decision for Our Country, for Each Other, and For Ourselves.
However, truth and knowledge were very difficult for us to find during that time period because authoritarian behavior by our politicians, with help and assistance from the media and from social media companies, was censoring anything and everything that disagreed with the government’s position.
Therefore, it was often almost impossible for Our American People to be able to find and read the true facts about the vaccines and about the pandemic.
The same is true of every fear and threat that is currently being exaggerated by our power-seeking politicians.
Every situation and every argument in the entire world has different viewpoints, and the Truth is always somewhere in the Middle Between These Viewpoints.
The Truth and the Solution do not have to be exactly in the middle at the 50% line, equal distance away from each viewpoint. However, the Truth and the Solution is always somewhere in the middle between the two extremes, and never on the extremes.
Therefore, some measure of Compromise is always needed to find the Truth and the Solution to any problem and to any question.
This means that we should not be fighting among ourselves about any of these things.
Instead of fighting against each other, we need to realize that we are being manipulated, that we are losing the freedom of our democracy, and that with each loss of freedom we are heading toward authoritarianism.
It is crucially important for the Saving of Our Country that we begin to see and realize that we are not noticing our own side’s authoritarian actions because we agree with what our side is doing, and that we are only noticing and interpreting the other side’s actions as authoritarian because we do not agree with what they are doing.
In summary, then, just as President Washington warned us about in his Farewell Address, we cannot allow ourselves to become divided.
Therefore, we need to Come Together To Save Our Country.
We need to Unite and Come Together To Build A Wonderful And Incredible World For You And For All Our Children.
For us to do this, we need a President and Political Leaders who calm situations for us, instead of a President and political leaders who cause division and escalate situations like they have been doing.
We need a President who does not seek to gain the power of a ruler by trying to scare You.
We need a President who Works For You And who Serves You like a President is supposed to do.
By having a President who Works For You and who Serves You, and by having a President who Leads The Way to calm the situation, then just like George Washington wrote in his Farewell Address, we will not be afraid anymore, and we will not choose to give up our freedoms and accept authoritarianism by either political party.
We need a President who will Work For You.
We need a President who will Serve You.
We need a President who will calm the situation so that You no longer fear the future.
We need a President who will make sure that You and Your Family Are Protected, not because of the President’s desire for power, but instead because the President Loves You, Loves Your Family, Loves Our Country, BELIEVES In You, and Deeply Wants For You To Succeed In Everything That You Do.
We need a President who will make sure that You Get To Keep All Of Your Freedoms.
And we need a President who will Help You To Achieve Your American Dream For You And For Your Family.
We BELIEVE For America!
