George Washington throws support to Obama

A central theme of Barack Obama's Presidential bid has been unity.  This is not a recent fad with him, as we learned yesterday in dawnt's diary.  In 2004, Obama stated that the most important thing to him was

Uniting a polarized America. There are those who are preparing to divide us. I say to them, there is not a liberal America, and a conservative America, there is the United States of America.

 March 11, on the occasion of his endorsement by admirals and generals, Obama said

After years of a divisive politics that uses national security as a wedge to drive us apart, how much longer do we have to wait to bring this country together to confront our common enemies?

Is talk of unity just words, useful in shallow speeches by an empty suit to temporarily energize mindless worshipers who will soon lose interest?  Not according to George Washington, who in his 1796 Farewell Address called "unity of government" the "main pillar in the edifice of" America's "real independence."

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.

Pretty strong words.  Washington sees unity as central to protecting our independence, tranquility at home, peace abroad, prosperity, and individual liberty.  When Obama places unity at the center of his platform, he stands firmly in the vision of the Father of Our Country.  Obama is embracing that which Washington found most essential to protecting the hard won gains of the American Revolution.

The Farewell Address was never delivered as a speech but promulgated instead through print. Our first President wrote with passion concerning the newborn American liberty and with uncommon insight about the nature of the threats it would face.  He found it

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 [the importance of unity]; 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

Heavy on Washington's mind was doubtless the regional tensions which would erupt into Civil War in half a century.  Yet, as he makes explicit later, his words apply equally well to ideological, religious, and political splintering.  So important is unity to the protection of our liberty that we are admonished to  

cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it

as the safeguard of our

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.

Washington wraps up this portion of his address by pointing out that in addition to natural commonality of custom which draws us together, simple self-interest tells us that

every portion of our country finds the most commanding motives for carefully guarding and preserving the union of the whole.

Does Obama understand this?  Yes he does.  From March 4

We believe that we rise or fall as one nation - as one people. That we are our brother's keeper. That we are our sister's keeper.

What is the basis of this all-important unity?  Is it a common religion?  A common language?  A common ideology?  Clothing styles?  Washington is quite precise in naming it as support for and obedience to the laws and institutions of the government as established by the freely adopted Constitution.  We have the right to change the Constitution, but until we change it through mutual agreement, we share a sacred obligation to obey it.

This government, the offspring of our own choice,  . . . and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty. 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.

Failure to understand the importance of unity opens the country to precisely the kind of attacks we have suffered under the neocons.  Has any Kossack ever defined the recent assaults on our liberty better than what follows?

All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle [duty to unite under the Constitution], and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; 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 of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests.

However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, 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 themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

(As an aside, the above portion of the Farewell Address was deleted from the State Department website sometime a little over a year ago, a strong indication that rather than being the incompetent leaders we sometimes think, the neocons know exactly what they are doing.  My apologies that I can't find the diary in which an alert Kossack uncovered the deletion.)

It is clear to me that George Washington's words reach across the centuries to lend credence to Obama's commitment to unity.  As to McCain and the neocons, Washington's Farewell Address warns against almost all of their policies: permanent over-militarization, reckless foreign adventures, excessive borrowing, the politics of divisiveness, and the undermining of the separation of powers.  I'll diary on that tomorrow.

Let's end by celebrating Obama's happy and patriotic habit, in keeping with the most profound understanding of the founders, of cherishing a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to unity; accustoming himself to think and speak of it in virtually every oration.

But in the end, enacting this agenda won't just require an investment. It will require a new spirit of cooperation, innovation, and shared sacrifice. We'll have to remind ourselves that we rise and fall as one nation; that a country in which only a few prosper is antithetical to our ideals and our democracy; and that those of us who have benefited greatly from the blessings of this country have a solemn obligation to open the doors of opportunity, not just for our children, but to all of America's children. That's the kind of vision I have for this country, and that's the kind of vision I hope to make real as President of the United States.

That is our calling in this campaign. To reaffirm that fundamental belief – I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper – that makes us one people, and one nation.

<snip>

...a century ago the progressive movement was born. It was rooted in the principle that the voices of the people can speak louder than special interests; that citizens can be connected to their government and to one another; and that all of us share a common destiny, an American Dream.

But too often, we lose our sense of common destiny; that understanding that we are all tied together; that when a woman has less than nothing in this country, that makes us all poorer.

<snip>

...we can begin to turn the page on the invisible barriers - the silent storms - that have ravaged this city and this country: the old divisions of black and white; of rich and poor. It's time to leave that to yesterday. It's time to choose tomorrow.

And from today:

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity.  Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country.  In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.