What made George Washington, born 278 years ago today, so great? His character. In the end, the intangible quality of character is how our families and friends will remember us.
The Character of George Washington
What made George Washington the most remarkable man of an extraordinary generation? He was not an intellectual giant like Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, or James Madison. Compared with most other founders, he was not well educated (he attended school for only about five years), and, unlike many of them, he disliked abstract philosophical discussions. Washington was intelligent, well informed, and astute, buthe was neither a polished writer nor a spellbinding speaker. Moreover, he was not particularly affectionate, said little in public meetings, and lacked the charisma of many of his successors. Defeating the British with his ragtag army was an impressive feat, but he was not a traditional military hero. He won no spectacular victories during the Revolutionary War. Although he is widely admired as an outstanding president, few of his policies were stupendous successes.
While praising his military and political record, many scholars contend that Washington’s genius lies principally in his character. The only other American president who has been so highly extolled for his character is Abraham Lincoln. Since Washington, all presidents have been ultimately measured not by the size of their electoral victories or the success of their legislative programs, but by their moral character. His character helped sustain his troops throughout the travails of the Revolutionary War, convince delegates to the Constitutional Convention to assign significant powers to the presidency, secure the ratification of the Constitution, and enable the new republic to survive in a hostile world.
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Many admirers considered Washington’s self-control the key facet of his character. He could master events because he had mastered himself. Despite being surrounded by fear, despair, indecisiveness, treason, and the threat of mutiny, he remained confident and steadfast. Eulogists also heralded his self-sacrifice, devotion to the common good, compassion, generosity, and benevolence.
Mark Steyn hits it out of the park again in this Thanksgiving note, Which history?
We've taken Cromwell's advice to his portraitist to paint him "warts and all", and show our kids all but solely the warts — spreading disease to Native Americans, enslaving blacks, interning the Japanese. Any non-wart stuff is mostly invented out of whole cloth: the US Constitution has its good points but they all come from the Iroquois, and the first Thanksgiving is some kind of proto-Communist celebration of collective farming.
A few months back, my little boy came home from Second Grade and said to me, "Guess what we learned today?" I said: "Rosa Parks." He said: "How did you know that?" I said: "Because it's always Rosa Parks." And, if you don't learn it in the context of any broader historical narrative, it's just a story about municipal transit seating arrangements.
Teaching only the warts is a terrible thing to do to young children. At its extreme it leads to those British Taliban captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan: Subjects of the Crown who'd been raised in English schools and taught only that the country to which they owed their nominal allegiance was the source of all the racism, oppression, colonialism, and imperialism in the world. Why be surprised that a proportion of the alumni of such a system would look elsewhere for their sense of identity?
But, even in its more benign form, warts-only education leaves a big hole where one's cultural inheritance should be.
Happy Fourth of July!
The greatness of the liberty we've been given is best seen in Lady Liberty, Bartholdi's great sculpture.
Barrymore Laurence Scherer clues us in to some of the allegorical meaning in Liberty as Statue and Symbol.
Liberty's serious demeanor underscores the idea that liberty itself comes at a cost and must not be taken lightly; her robes evoke the republican ideals of ancient Greece and Rome. Her left hand and arm hold a tablet of the law -- like that of Moses descending from Mount Sinai -- inscribed "JULY IV MDCCLXXVI," the birth date of the nation.
Three heart-warming stories.
Beginning with the generosity of donors to the Heifer Project and a pair of goats comes The Luckiest Girl in the World. Nicholas Kristof tells the story.
Work only immigrants would do. Huddled Statues, Working to Be Free.
After 9/11, one woman with no ties to the military found her patriotic calling, Operation Gratitude.
She delivered more than 350,000 packages to soldiers who used the Beanie Babies to reward young Iraqi children for information on hidden IEDs.
The playwright David Mamet in the Village Voice
I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind.
As a child of the '60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart.
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I wondered, how could I have spent decades thinking that I thought everything was always wrong at the same time that I thought I thought that people were basically good at heart? Which was it? I began to question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years. I think that people, in circumstances of stress, can behave like swine, and that this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but the only subject, of drama.
I'd observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances—that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired—in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it.
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I recognized that I held those two views of America (politics, government, corporations, the military). One was of a state where everything was magically wrong and must be immediately corrected at any cost; and the other—the world in which I actually functioned day to day—was made up of people, most of whom were reasonably trying to maximize their comfort by getting along with each other (in the workplace, the marketplace, the jury room, on the freeway, even at the school-board meeting).
And I realized that the time had come for me to avow my participation in that America in which I chose to live.
So, Paris loses out: Hilton fortune pledged to charity
Barron Hilton, Paris's grandfather, announced plans to donate 97% of his $2.3 billion fortune to charity.
The foundation supports projects that provide clean water in Africa, education for blind children, and housing for the mentally ill. Its aims, based on Conrad Hilton's will, are "to relieve the suffering, the distressed and the destitute."
Looks like Paris will have to get a job
Michael Yon, embedded with the troops for the past three years posts this photograph and calls it Thanks and Praise as men and women, both Christian and Muslim, place a cross atop St. John's Church in Bagdad, a church that had been bombed and burned in 2004 but has since been restored with the cross, the crowning touch.
The Iraqis asked me to convey a message of thanks to the American people. ” Thank you, thank you,” the people were saying. One man said, “Thank you for peace.” Another man, a Muslim, said “All the people, all the people in Iraq, Muslim and Christian, is brother.” The men and women were holding bells, and for the first time in memory freedom rang over the ravaged land between two rivers.
Iraqpundit welcomes the recent changes in Baghdad and writes.
Frankly, I don't understand why so many mock us for wanting a future for Iraq. Is your hatred for George Bush so great that you prefer to see millions of civilians suffer just to prove him wrong?
It really comes down to this: you are determined to see Iraq become a permanent hellhole because you hate Bush. And we are determined to see Iraq become a success, because we want to live.
Sometimes, it takes a fresh eye to see America as it was and is. French President Nicolas Sarkozy in his speech before a joint session of Congress did just that.
Fathers took their sons to see the vast cemeteries where, under thousands of white crosses so far from home, thousands of young American soldiers lay who had fallen not to defend their own freedom but the freedom of all others, not to defend their own families, their own homeland, but to defend humanity as a whole.
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And as they listened to their fathers, watched movies, read history books and the letters of soldiers who died on the beaches of Normandy and Provence, as they visited the cemeteries where the star-spangled banner flies, the children of my generation understood that these young Americans, 20 years old, were true heroes to whom they owed the fact that they were free people and not slaves. France will never forget the sacrifice of your children.
To those 20-year-old heroes who gave us everything, to the families of those who never returned, to the children who mourned fathers they barely got a chance to know, I want to express France's eternal gratitude.
Now and in the years to come, I hope and trust the Iraqis will feel the same way towards the treasure of American blood and money expended there.
Paris Hilton's Inheritance Revoked by Grandfather
Embarrassed by his granddaughter's behavior apparently has Conrad Hilton setting up a philanthropic foundation to give away his billions and carry on the family tradition.
That's about $95 million Paris will not get.
One of my new favorite blogs is the Unclutterer which is beginning a new series on handling inherited clutter.
How do you unclutter a person’s things after they die? My grandfather died this weekend, and we dread the idea of going through all his things—not just emotionally and psychologically, but from a logistical standpoint. How much stuff do we keep? Nobody has room in their houses for all the sentimental treasures of their departed loved ones, but it feels callous to throw away their old anniversary cards and favorite mediocre artwork. How do we deal with it all?
If you need it or love it, keep it. If something is very important to you because of its great sentimental value, keep it. If something is important because of its historical value, keep it or give it to an archive where it will stay safe.
That's what Mary Custis Lee did with two old steamer trunks
The trunks were stuffed with Lee family papers -- a priceless cache of 4,000 letters, photographs and documents. DeButts carted them to the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond, which houses the world's largest collection of Lee papers. He spent a week there, sitting at a desk in the research library, reaching into Mary Custis Lee's trunks and picking out treasures and trash.
Thanks to her foresight, we now have A Portrait in Letters of Robert E. Lee.