George Washington, Apparently ‘It’s Complicated’
It was September 2021.
When I served on the Milford Board of Education in my Connecticut hometown, the superintendent presented an instructional slideshow highlighting over-the-summer teacher-student exercises to reinforce the implementation of curriculum, new methods, and professional development.
One assignment had students name “heroes and villains,” and then fill them in a Venn Diagram. Batman, Superman, and even police officers were among the former; Darth Vader, Thanos, and Adolf Hitler, the latter. But in the middle circle — marked Neutral — was one person that strikingly concerned me: George Washington.
Washington, once called the “greatest man in the world” even by adversaries, is anything but a neutral character in history. Frankly, he should reside in children’s minds as a hero — “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen,” as eulogized by Henry Lee.
Indeed, if Washington … can be treated indifferently or viewed with skepticism, that reasoning inevitably extends into the nation he founded and its institutions.
At best, the moment reflects a lack of historical understanding about Washington. No doubt, his neutrality was based on the fact that he owned slaves, whom he ultimately freed in his will, hoping others would follow his lead. At worst, however, it signals a troubling bellwether for the forthcoming generation’s diminishing sense of national pride. (RELATED: A Nation That Can’t Explain 1776 Urgently Needs a Civic Education Revival)
Indeed, if Washington — the father of the country — can be treated indifferently or viewed with skepticism, that reasoning inevitably extends into the nation he founded and its institutions.
In turn, ignorance, apathy, or in some cases hostility toward America’s founding — which reared its insidious head during the 2020 riots — can produce a bevy of consequences transforming America’s character, and not for the better. (RELATED: A Republic, If We Can Keep It)
The landscape is primed for such a revolution: though not of arms but of the heart, and within the next decade. In a recent Fox News poll, a “record 38 percent think it would be a good thing for the United States to move away from capitalism and in the direction of socialism.” This favorability is an increase from 32 percent in 2022 and 18 percent in 2010.
Likewise, last June, a Gallup survey found “clear generational differences in American pride” with 41 percent of Gen Z and 58 percent of millennials being “extremely or very proud to be an American.” Older generations, meanwhile, polled more than 70 percent when asked the same question.
For older Americans, such trends may evoke fears of a Jacobin or Bolshevik upheaval — that Guillotines or gulags are being assembled to terrorize political adversaries. Yet today’s ideological shift differs from the Cold War paradigm of the 20th century. As David Azerrad — assistant professor and research fellow at Hillsdale College — once wrote in 2016, the “red dawn is not really upon us,” adding, “There is almost no support in America for the Marxist-Leninist variety of socialism, which was discredited after we won the Cold War.”
Instead, rather than tearing down the system outright, as Marxism advocates, the New Left’s process has been to exploit the tools of bureaucracy, governments, the economy, Silicon Valley, and the educational system as cudgels for submission to the “tyrannical wokeness,” as Daniel Mahoney, senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, observed in The American Mind. (RELATED: Democratic Socialists Are Trying to Trounce Democrats in the Primaries)
The Obama and Biden administrations laid the groundwork in recent decades: Louis Lerner used the IRS to audit conservative organizations. The FBI investigated traditional Catholics. The Justice Department labeled concerned parents as “domestic terrorists.” Social media companies buried the Hunter Biden laptop scandal. Schools and the U.S. military were forced to implement DEI curriculum and standards. And employees were fired for not receiving the COVID vaccine.
When individual liberties and limited government erode, both principles that fueled the American Revolution, a void opens. In that vacuum, cynicism and moral relativism have seeped into the collective consciousness; so much so that reveling in political violence towards one’s opponents — as seen after Charlie Kirk’s assassination — is not reprehensible, but acceptable. Moreover, it leads to intellectual lapses, such as Antifa groups aligning with the Iranian theocracy — which is fascist — just to spite Americanism.
A resentment among millennials and Gen Z has metastasized toward the previous generation, and with it, an animus toward the ideals of free market capitalism. As such, the populist Left is embracing the “warmth of collectivism,” as spearheaded by socialist New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whose administration has proposed “tax the rich” schemes and is filled with advocates for seizing private property. Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — who is a poster-child for modern progressives — has called Western Civilization “thin,” that culture “has been a fluid, evolving thing.” (RELATED: The ‘Warmth of Collectivism’ Comes to New York)
Long gone is humanity’s capacity to recognize self-evident truths, as emphasized in the Declaration of Independence, among the populist Left. As Bishop Robert Barron correctly identified, the irony in Rep. Oscaio-Cortez’s “dismissal” demonstrates a sheer lack of appreciation for the civilization that “produced the university system, affirmed the rights and prerogatives of the individual, and gave rise to democratic rule of law.”
But how can one claim to be stewards of Americanism, yet loathe the civilization, ideals, and even persons that were foundational to the nation?
Yet this lapse in historicity matters in a political arena poised to devolve into the Newtonian Third Law of politics — where every action will have an equal and opposite reaction. Indeed, not if, but when the populist Left assumes the federal levers of power, one might suspect political persecutions through lawfare, particularly those in the Trump administration. In the end, the Left will justify its actions by claiming to be the protectors of “true American values,” while ridding the country of “fascism” like defunding the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
But how can one claim to be stewards of Americanism, yet loathe the civilization, ideals, and even persons that were foundational to the nation? A house divided cannot stand — nor one unloved.
That September 2021 school-board meeting and Washington’s neutrality have since lingered in my mind and heart. He sacrificed his life, fortune, and sacred honor to found a nation based on the ideal that “all men are created equal,” and though imperfect in that pursuit, nevertheless, the nation borne from 1776 has done incalculable good to those here and those seeking freedom in the centuries since.
If the next generation views the nation’s founding figures with indifference or even contempt, the greater danger is not simply historical ignorance but civic detachment, and jettisoning the spirit of liberty enshrined in the Declaration and U.S. Constitution.
Yet there is hope. America’s semiquincentennial — the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding — presents a rare opportunity to renew civic education and patriotic appreciation among the leaders of tomorrow. Indeed, this moment is a turning point. If we fail to cultivate a deeper understanding of the nation’s history and ideals, a new American revolution may indeed come — not with muskets and militias, but with a generation untethered from the principles that once defined the republic.
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