America's first president is unique and deserves to be honored individually. We need to return him to his place of honor on the calendar and in our hearts.
Now especially, America needs its heroes. The nation is badly divided along ideological lines without any unifying figures to bring us together. We are losing, or may have already lost, the commonality of purpose that made the United States what at least one president called mankind's"last best hope."
In the ensuing years, the nation's first president has seen himself downgraded from his position as a revered national icon to a pitchman for carpet and auto sales. His picture is no longer omnipresent on the walls of the nation's public schools. His image remains with us on the currency, while his name, which remains on street signs and high schools, has become synonymous with dysfunctional, bloated, wasteful and inefficient government.
He led the American forces in the war for independence and was offered a kingdom but turned it down to return to Mt. Vernon and life as a gentleman farmer. Victorious in war, he was content to let others bear the responsibility for creating the hard-won new nation.
We cannot forge ahead together if we do not understand where we have been and where we came from. We must acknowledge our failures, but not at the expense of being able to celebrate our successes. The tensions established by the founders produced an incrementalism essential to the rule of law, which, it has been said, exists in part to temper the passions of mankind.
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