President George Washington warned that members of political parties would sacrifice their country to advance their party.
He stated in his Farewell Address, September 19, 1796:
"In contemplating the causes which may disturb our Union, it occurs as matter of serious concern, that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing Parties ...
One of the expedients of Party to acquire influence, within particular districts, is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts.
You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heart burnings which spring from these misrepresentations ..."
Washington continued:
"And of fatal tendency ... to put, in the place of the delegated will of the Nation, the will of a Party;-often a small but artful and enterprising minority ...
They are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the Power of the People and to usurp for the themselves the reins of Government;
destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion ..."
He stated further:
"One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the Constitution, alterations ... and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown ...
It is indeed little else than a name, where the Government is too feeble to withstand the enterprises of faction ...
I have already intimated to you the danger of Parties in the State ...
... Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of Party, generally.
This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its roots in the strongest passions of the human Mind.
It exists under different shapes in all Governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form it is seen in its greatest rankness and is truly their worst enemy ...
Domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to Party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism ..."
Washington continued:
"But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.
The disorders and miseries ... gradually incline the minds of men to seek security ... in the absolute power of an Individual ... (who) turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty ...
Ill founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection."
Washington warned that "party passions" would become a door through which foreign governments and globalists could seize power.
This tactic of taking advantage of a nation's internal political animosity has been documented since:
- Philip of Macedon's 4th century BC conquest of Athens;
- India's 3rd century BC Gupta Empire politician Chanakya;
- Caesar's 1st century BC seizing of power in Rome;
- Italy's 16th century Cesare Borgia, as recorded by Machiavelli;
- British East India Company's 17th century conquest of India;
- 18th century French Revolution "Jacobins";
- German's 19th century Hegelian dialectics and Marxism;
- Lenin's 20th century Revolution in Russia;
- Cold War activities of the KGB and CIA;
- Saul Alizsky's political organizing in Chicago.
A more recent concern is the unprecedented push for mail-in voting of millions of ballots which could overload the postal system.
The counting of the mail-in ballots went on for weeks after the election.
George Washington wrote:
"(Political) animosity opens the doors to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the Government itself through the channels of party passions.
Thus the policy and the will of one country, are subjected to the policy and will of another ...
The habits of thinking in a free Country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective Constitutional spheres; avoiding in the exercise of the Powers of one department to encroach upon another ...
... `Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent Alliances with any portion of the foreign world ...
'Tis folly in one Nation to look for disinterested favors from another ... it must pay with a portion of its Independence for whatever it may accept."
Increasingly, challenged election results become legal court issues brought before the Federal Judiciary.
Thomas Jefferson warned of usurpation by the courts in a letter to Mr. Hammond in 1821:
"The germ of dissolution of our Federal Government is in ... the Federal Judiciary;
an irresponsible body ... working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States."
On June 25, 1824, James Madison wrote to Henry Lee:
"I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation.
In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution.
And if that be not the guide in expounding it, there can be no security for a consistent and stable ... exercise of its powers ...
What a metamorphosis would be produced in the code of law if all its ancient phraseology were to be taken in its modern sense."
Justice Hugo Black dissented in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) to Justice William O. Douglas' discovery of "penumbras" of meanings from "emanations" of provisions in the Bill of Rights, thus creating a "right of privacy" which led to abortion:
"One of the most effective ways of ... expanding a constitutionally guaranteed right is to substitute for the crucial word or words ... another word or words, more or less flexible ...
'Privacy' is a broad, abstract and ambiguous concept which can ... easily be interpreted as a constitutional ban on many things ..."
Justice Black continued:
"No provision of the Constitution specifically gives such blanket power to courts to ... hold unconstitutional those laws which they believe unwise or dangerous ...
(To do so) takes away from Congress and States the power to make laws ... and transfers that power to the Court for ultimate determination.”
Instead of court's evolving the Constitution by changing the meanings of words in it, any changes to the Constitution should be made through the Amendment process.
President Washington warned in his Farewell Address:
"If in the opinion of the People, the distribution or modification of the Constitutional powers be in any way particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates.
But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.
The precedent (of usurpation) must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit which the use can at any time yield."
President James Monroe in his First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1817, that when people become ignorant, the government usurps power away from them:
"Under this Constitution ... the States, respectively protected by the National Government under a mild, parental system against foreign dangers, and enjoying within their separate spheres, by a wise partition of power ...
It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty.
Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and a usurper soon found.
The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin."
President Donald J. Trump explained January 20, 2017:
"For too long, a small group in our nation's Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost.
Washington flourished -- but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered -- but the jobs left, and the factories closed.
The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens."
President William Henry Harrison stated in his Inaugural Address, March 4, 1841:
"The danger to all well-established free governments arises from the unwillingness of the people to believe in ... the influence of designing men ...
This is the old trick of those who would usurp the government of their country."
Harrison added usurpers would use obfuscation and deflection in their campaigning:
"In the name of democracy they speak, warning the people against the influence of wealth and the danger of aristocracy ...
The tendencies of all such governments in their decline is to monarchy ... and, like the false Christs whose coming was foretold by the Savior, seeks to, and were it possible would, impose upon the true and most faithful disciples of liberty.
It is in periods like this that it behooves the people to be most watchful of those to whom they have intrusted power."
Ben Franklin warned of people's inclination to surrender power to government, June 2, 1787:
"There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharaoh
-- get first all the people's money, then all their lands, and then make them and their children servants forever ...
There is a natural inclination in mankind to kingly government ...
I am apprehensive ... that the government of the States may, in future times, end in a monarchy."
G.K. Chesterton wrote in The Everlasting Man, 1925:
"One fact we really can prove ... is that despotism can be ... a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic.
A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep."
In 1961, Ronald Reagan warned of socialism being instituted through a medical healthcare crisis:
"One of the traditional
methods of imposing statism or socialism is medicine.
It is easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project ...
If you don’t stop this ... behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom ... until one day we will awake and find we have socialism ...
We want no further encroachment on these individual liberties and freedoms."
Washington added in his Farewell Address:
"The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism.
A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position.
The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power; by dividing and distributing it into different depositories, and constituting each the Guardian of the Public Weal (welfare) against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern; some of them in our country and under our own eyes.
To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them."
Washington continued with what could be considered a warning of globalists and foreign trade bills:
"Passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils ...
It gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens ... facility to betray, or sacrifice the interests of their own country ... sometimes even with popularity ...
Such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent Patriot.
How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils! ...
Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, (I conjure you to believe me fellow citizens) the jealously of a free people to be constantly awake."
President Trump stated July 3, 2020:
"A growing danger that threatens every blessing ...
Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues ... deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime ...
Some know exactly what they are doing ... One of their political weapons is ... shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees.
This is the very definition of totalitarianism ... This left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution."
Washington warned that those usurping power would use psychological projection to malign genuine patriotic citizens:
"Real Patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favorite, are liable to become suspected and odious;
while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests ..."
He added:
"In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend ...
I could wish; that they will control the usual current of the passions ... that they may ... moderate the fury of party spirit ... "
Washington ended his Farewell Address:
"Though, in reviewing the incidents of my administration, I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors.
Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend.
I shall also carry with me the hope that my country will never cease to view them with indulgence;
and that, after forty five years of my life dedicated to its service with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest."
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Image Credits: Public Domain; Description: Broadside, George Washington's Farewell Address, page one; Date: September 19, 1796; Source: Library of Congress's Religion and the Founding of the American Republic exhibition; https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel06.html#obj156 ; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Washington%27s_Farewell_Address.jpg
Perhaps it is fitting that we are living in the times of our last Presidency being warned by our first President and his fellow founders of that which we’ve done to bring about our end- apathy and complacency, that which we brought on ourselves. I think our end can be traced back when true Patriots failed to allow socialists to pervert the principles of Harvard. The domino’s started falling- The Godly failed to stand on the Word. I believe Ann Lotz when she said we ARE the last generation before Christ returns, she believed within 5 years. I still have a hard time believing that the phrase, “We’ve met the enemy and it is us,” was not the quote anyone famous said, because it is SO fitting, and so confusion how anyone could twist the original, “and they are ours,” taken from the War of 1812, into what people say it said. Two truths remain- God’s Word and the original writing of the authors found at The American Minute.
Bill, there are a lot of days when I wish I could drop just the header and a very condensed version of your daily topic on FB or other social media to let other see just enough to get their attention or at least put some good info on social media. Would also be great for emailing or messaging to friends and foes alike. A link to the full article at the end would be a good idea as well.