Over 200 years ago, a man from America’s past spoke some true words of wisdom that through the years have been largely ignored by the history books and the media, for obvious reasons.
He was well-known for cutting down a cherry tree, throwing a dollar over the Potomac River, and having had one of the first sets of false teeth around. He was also a general and our first president. However, his farewell speech to the country has been largely ignored and very seldom printed. I shall quote a part of that speech.
“So likewise a passionate attachment of one nation over another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest, in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter, without adequate inducements or justifications. It also leads to concessions, of the favorite nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions, by unnecessary parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill will, and a disposition to retaliate in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld.”
This was only a small segment of the truths he espoused back then that could have been written about our relations in the Middle East today.
Of course, if Washington were alive today, he would be called politically incorrect, insensitive, nationalistic, and no doubt anti-Semitic.
And besides who could believe a guy that owned slaves and raised tobacco? That’s about as politically incorrect as you can get!
Snohomish
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