George Washington

[Zen653]

So....the man you charge with blood on his hands because he wouldn't give up the cause for which he was fighting, never had the authority to make such a decision, did he?

In practice, didn't the Continental Congress defer to Washington on most of his major requests?

So, at bottom, your complaint about Washington is that he failed to be a cowardly, disobedient traitor.

He wasn't a coward, but he was certainly a traitor to England. Washington isn't much different than Jefferson Davis in that regard.

That puts "blood on his hands?"

No, it merely makes his condemnation of foreign conflict seem less than genuine.

He was a whole lot smarter than you give him credit for Zen. Unlike the whack job right wing religious zealots you worship, GW had the wisdom and good sense chose not to involve religion with politics and you question his faith? His attendence at church is none of your business anyway.

If my tone somehow conveys that I'm upset by Washington's lack of religiosity, that's not at all my intent. To the contrary, I find it remarkable that he and most other early presidents had the courage to truly separate church and state. I find it baffling that our early leaders understood secular governance better than our current ones. Usually as countries industrialize, they move further away from religion. We seem to be the exception.

[Nat]

Since we're also celebrating Black History Month, how many slaves did Washington own?

[Grandstander]

Originally Posted by Zen653

If my tone somehow conveys that I'm upset by Washington's lack of religiosity, that's not at all my intent. To the contrary, I find it remarkable that he and most other early presidents had the courage to truly separate church and state. I find it baffling that our early leaders understood secular governance better than our current ones. Usually as countries industrialize, they move further away from religion. We seem to be the exception.

The founders of America were reacting to the circumstances of their more immediate past. The 17th Century had been a religious/political catastrophe. An enormous amount of blood and treasure was wasted in horrible, useless wars where the crown was linked to one faith and everyone of other faiths were plotting to replace the crown's wearer with someone of congruent faith. It isn't fair to call these religious wars only, but it was definitely the fusion of church and state which was most directly responsible for the disasters which followed. The Thirty Years War in Germany resulted in the the worst man made European calamity until WW I. The English Civil War, while less bloody, meant that England spent an entire century more or less consumed with instability and civil strife.

It is natural then, that those building the American experiment, would very much have in mind a desire to construct a government not plagued by the sorts of problems which convulsed the old world the previous century. Their solution was to divide church and state, fix it so that political power was not linked to any one faith which generated resentment and rebellion from those outside that faith. Their idea was to keep the government out of the religion business, it was to neither establish one, nor persecute any.

[Rapier]

Originally Posted by Zen653

I find it baffling that our early leaders understood secular governance better than our current ones. Usually as countries industrialize, they move further away from religion. We seem to be the exception.

The American media has manufactured an urban myth of Christian bogeymen who wield enormous power from pulpits unknown. Droves of nameless Evangelicals who pollute elections with their hate vote.

200 years after the founding fathers our jaded R rated society decides to mix their religion with their politics?

It's the media wagging the dog as per usual.

[CaptiveCoyote]

Washington was a Federalist not a Republican. He believed in a stronger centralized government as opposed to the Anti-Federalists who wanted more powers devolved back to the states. He also believed in higher taxes to raise more revenue to fund that government.

[Grandstander]

Originally Posted by CaptiveCoyote

Washington was a Federalist not a Republican. He believed in a stronger centralized government as opposed to the Anti-Federalists who wanted more powers devolved back to the states. He also believed in higher taxes to raise more revenue to fund that government.

The natural instinct for us who are removed by two hundred years, is to view the above on a more literal basis than it actually was.

The Federalist/anti-Federalist struggle was indeed a strong central vs federated states style dispute, but at all times the actual conflict was populism vs aristocracy. Young America was facing the decisions regarding exactly how much power was to be truly vested in the people. All previous democracies had been limited ones, situations where power was shared rather than monopolized, but it was only shared among the elites.

The Federalists were those who believed that the nation should be run by those with the greatest levels of education and experience, those with the most to lose should things go wrong....propertied men. The idea was to have a government where the final authority was vested in those who were most responsible, those who would act for the interests of the nation as a whole rather than those who would influenced by short term emotions and immediate gain.

The anti-Federalists were those who were willing to go much further, to trust the population at large and break up the elite monopoly on political power held by the wealthy and well born.