Aethernaut

<a href="http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/washing.htm" target="_blank">The full version of GW's farewell address.</a>

I might note that "god" isn't mentioned once, only religion. And there are several references to the Constitution.

A taste: "The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government."

-SK

randman

I suggest some of you listen to GW a little more closely.

“Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion, and Morality are indispensable supports. -- In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens. -- The mere Politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. -- A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. -- Let it simply be asked where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without
religion. -- Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure -- reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of
religious principle.”

—George Washington´s Farewell Address, Harvard Classics (1910), Vol.43, p.260

Whatever his personal beleifs were, it is clear that he favored religion and viewed it as indispensable to a successful nation.

I might add that Thomas Paine publicly called Washington a traitor and wished his speedy death while Washington was president. Could that have affected Washington's postive emphasis upon religion, which at that time would have meant organized religion? Seems this is a direct rebuke to secularism, especially the kind that Thomas Paine had come to advocate. These words don't suggest Washington was a Deist. Whether he was a Christian in the evangelical born-again sense is debatable. His favoring religion in general is not.

Toto

There's really no debate. Washington never mentioned Jesus, and there is no indication that he was a believer. He favored religion for other people, to keep them in line.

Christians have created many false stories about Washington. Buffman has sent me this:

lpetrich

I've yet to see any evidence that George Washington was particularly saintly, except if one counts his refusal to make himself King George I. At any rate, he was personally indifferent to religion, participating only when socially convenient. If George Washington had wanted a state church, he would have pressed for one.

As to Niccolo Machiavelli, he wasn't really a villain. His villainous reputation is due to his book, The Prince, which was some instructions on how to succeed in Renaissance-Italy politics. His book was like a book that some present-day political consultant would write on how to win elections.

And yes, he advised that a politician must seem virtuous.

lpetrich

All that George Washington was saying was that religion is useful for making people virtuous -- no truth whatsoever was implied. The honest version of this view is the willingness to push a false religion for the purpose of making people virtuous. Or at least a religion that one considers false.

This has been the view of Plato, whose Republic was to feature an official "royal lie", a religion he considered false. A view shared by several others in the Greco-Roman world like Strabo and Polybius, and later thinkers like Niccolo Machiavelli.

I also note that George Washington also opposed:

* A big National Debt

* Standing armies

* Foreign entanglements

How far we have strayed from GW's ideals.

[ March 25, 2002: Message edited by: lpetrich ]</p>

randman

Wshington's endorsement of religion as indispensable is particlarly strong. In general, he beleived in not taking sides in terms of partisanship, and whether he was, or not a Christian, it would seem that his comments on the necessity of religion would thus be the same.
You are reading into his endorsement a hypocrisy that I don't believe can be substantiated.
What can be substantiated is that Washington viewed religion as an absolute necessity for the nation. This takes on a particulr relevance when we consider the context if when the statement was made. As you may know, Jefferson wanted to take sides with France, and viewed the French revolution to be in the same spirit as our's. This boiled over into a major feud with Adams, and Jefferson actually both argued for the right for states to secede on the same lines as the Confederates did, and moreover, basically did what would be considered treason today in his efforts to undermine Adams and support France. Adams, by the way, correctly predicted the French revolution would end in dictatorship.

Back to Washington, this whole feud started when George Washington was president, and many allies of the anti-federalists were extremely critical of GW, Thomas Paine even calling him a traitor.
Basically, they were infuriated at Jay's treaty and GW keeping us out of the war between England and France. Madison and Jefferson actually had the vast majority of Congress on their side, but noone could withstand the prestige of Washington, and his view held sway, and Washington was probably right. He basically bet on England winning.

Well, Washington's pointed comments on religion has to be seen in the context of this controversy. He repudiated the secularism of the French revolution, and it's allies here in the US, and those like Thomas Paine who criticized organized religion. I hardly see GW's comments coming from a man who actually rejected religious beleif especially since Washington received a lot of intense criticism for refusing to embrace the secularism of men like Paine, Jefferson? (debatable), and the French revolution.

By the way, noone is has argued Washington favored a national church. Don't know where one poster's comment along those lines comes from.

Toto

More from Buffman, the conscientious historian:

(Buffman’s reply)

Thomas Paine's original letter was 36 pages.

(It is the last paragraph of this second section below, where the direct charge at GW is made. As you can see, in Paine's expressed view it has little to do with religion and everything to do with Washington's (and Adams) betrayal of (Catholic)France, our salvation in the Revolutionary War, in favor of our recent enemy...the (Protestant) British Crown.)...even though had been imprisoned by the French and left to languish by his former supposed friend, George Washington.
Part I
Part II


Paine’s place in history
(Just some thoughts): I estimate the population of the 1800 United States at 5.3 million. How many were of French extraction? How many of English? How many Catholics held elected political office? How many Protestants? How many Catholics or Protestants would have declared Paine an Atheist because of his Part One, 27 Jan 1794 , publication of "The Age of Reason?" How many men branded by Christians as atheists have been elected to office? Just one that I know about...Thomas Jefferson...a Deist. In the land of the free and the home of the brave, it is political suicide to declare oneself an Atheist when running for office. So there is a religious test after all. It took over 170 years to elect the first Roman Catholic President...a member of the cult that started Christianity.)

http://www.netcolony.com/news/presidents/religion.html

Toto

You are the first person to mention a national church on this thread. I think you are confusing threads.

You are throwing out a lot of sweeping generalities without any supporting evidence. It is not very persuasive. For example:

You act like you know Washington. And what intense criticism are you talking about for refusing to embrace a word that had not yet been invented? Who criticized Washington for refusing to embrace Paine?

lpetrich

Actually, George Washington's view may have been something like that of the ancient geographer Strabo:

"The multitude are restrained from vice by the punishments the gods are said to inflict upon offenders, and by those terrors and threatenings which certain dreadful words and monstrous forms imprint upon their minds...For it is impossible to govern the crowd of women, and all the common rabble, by philosophical reasoning, and lead them to piety, holiness and virtue - but this must be done by superstition, or the fear of the gods, by means of fables and wonders; for the thunder, the aegis, the trident, the torches (of the Furies), the dragons, &c., are all fables, as is also all the ancient theology. These things the legislators used as scarecrows to terrify the childish multitude." Geog., B. I

And the ancient historian Polybius:

"Since the multitude is ever fickle, full of lawless desires, irrational passions and violence, there is no other way to keep them in order but by the fear and terror of the invisible world; on which account our ancestors seem to me to have acted judiciously, when they contrived to bring into the popular belief these notions of the gods, and of the infernal regions." B. vi 56.

And Plato:

Timaeus Locrus, the Pythagorean, after stating that the doctrine of rewards and punishments after death is necessary to society, proceeds as follows: "For as we sometimes cure the body with unwholesome remedies, when such as are most wholesome produce no effect, so we restrain those minds with false relations, which will not be persuaded by the truth. There is a necessity, therefore, of instilling the dread of those foreign torments: as that the soul changes its habitation; that the coward is ignominiously thrust into the body of a woman; the murderer imprisoned within the form of a savage beast; the vain and inconstant changed into birds, and the slothful and ignorant into fishes."

And as to the French Revolution, I will quote one of its leaders, Maximilien Robespierre: "Atheism is aristocratic; the idea of a great Being that watches over oppressed innocence and punishes triumphant crime is altogether popular." However, he had had no taste for the Catholic Church. And some French Revolutionaries were outright atheists.

randman

Well, Toto, when I have some time, I will see what is on the web. Most of my knowledge comes from books by historians, and you guys seem to favor the web more than written works on paper b y noted historians. That is why I refer to the encyclopedia so much. Seems like an easy place to start.

The facts I mentioned on Washington come straight from noted historians. There is disagreement for sure over what all of them right, but the events and such are not all that debated.

Maybe you could do us a favor, and provide a link to somewhere on the web with some of this stuff. One book I was just reading that is "Founding Brothers" by Joseph J. Ellis. Ellis has a pulitzer prize and is a history professor at Mount Holyoke College, and was a former dean at West Point. He was educated at William and Mary, and Yale University.