From Washington’s Farewell Address – To The People Of The United States, written in 1796 with help from Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, around halfway in you read:
All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force—to put in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party; often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common councils and modified by mutual interests. However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.
Washington’s Farewell Address – To The People Of The United States
Presidential farewell addresses are the exit interview, whereby the employee can be candid. Calling out systems that do not work. Noting people who are problematic. Reminiscing on administration successes. Ignoring failures and scandals. Predicting future problems. Eisenhower warned us of the “Military Industrial Complex.” Reagan embraced all sorts of immigrants and the “shining city on a hill” but warned that Americans would begin to take for granted their freedoms. A book about presidential farewell addresses is overdue. It would be a great way to teach United States history.
It is eerie how George Washington in 1796 could have predicted the character of a man hundreds of years into the future – “…by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people” explains precisely the method of Donald Trump. And to think that Washington probably wrote the address with a quill pen and inkwell.
Download Washington’s Farewell Address. Print it out and read it. It is slow news that does not break. It is only twenty-six pages.