Robert Strong’s column, “George Washington’s worries are coming true” (PDN, Sept. 20-21) was a great summary of Washington’s Farewell Address.
The author mentions Washington’s view of “a poorly informed public” as being a danger.
More specifically, it is my understanding that Washington was quite a bit more pointed, saying in a Feb. 7, 1788, letter to Marquis de Lafayette, “The government … can never be in danger of degenerating into a monarchy, an oligarchy, an aristocracy or any other despotic or oppressive form so long as there shall remain any virtue in the body of the people.”
And a draft of his first inaugural address says, “No compact among men … can be pronounced everlasting and inviolable, and if I may so express myself, that no wall of words, that no mound of parchment can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other.”
In the final version of that address, delivered on April 30, 1789, Washington said, “The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”
Vernon L. Frykholm, Jr.
Sequim