Gee, guess I had better say something really deep before people begin to think I’ve sunk into the earth or some-such.
Sorry, nothing meaningful to report.
I guess today would be better suited to the holiday we celebrated last Monday being as George Washington’s Birthday was yesterday. There has been a good deal of talk in the sort of things I read about the travesty of replacing Washington’s Birthday – the official, legal holiday – with the amorphous blob known as President’s Day. Although many Presidents were great men and all did something to advance the nation why should we be celebrating such luminaries as Millard Fillmore, Zachary Taylor, Wm. Henry Harrison, James Buchanan or Jimmy Carter? All were more or less failures, one served only a matter of days before his death, another a matter of months. Why on earth would we reduce the memory of George Washington in order to elevate these men?
I have become, over the years, increasingly fond of George Washington. When everyone first encounters him, in school, he’s portrayed as a statue might be: aloof, above the fray, beyond criticism or engagement. If you take the time to learn about the man you begin to discover someone very different. Someone who burned with ambition as intense as any man in American political history. Someone who was every bit as dignified as the accounts we read but as coarse as a jack tar when occasion called for it.
Did you know Washington threw a hell of a booze fest when running for the Virginia Assembly in his youth? Something on the order of barrels of hard cider and bottles of whiskey and rum. How about at the Battle of Monmouth when his subordinate, Charles Lee, was retreating before the advance of the British main body and Washington’s damning of Lee continued until the “leaves shook on the trees” and was “the most beautiful I ever heard” according to one of his officers.
Add the reality of the man to the reality of his achievements and you have the very model of a strong, independent, virtuous citizen which is ever deserving of emulation and certainly of commemoration to the exclusion of all others.