Thursday, February 22, 2007

The Palladium of your political safety?

Today is George Washington's birthday. Here is an excerpt from his farewell address which citizens of any country would do very well to contemplate.

The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.

It often seems to me that ` much pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth' describes nearly everything that is happening to the Anglosphere at the moment. Of course that's not true, but the sentence is a very accurate description of most intellectuals' actions directed at it.

Of course, in the UK we didn't so much indignantly frown upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts as welcome devolution with open arms.

Never mind, at least we're keeping the children happy.

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