geeky
In Washington's Farewell: The Founding Father's Warning to Future Generations, Daily Beast Editor-in-Chief John Avlon looks at the first President's valedictory, tracing the history of its creation and genesis, analyzing and dissecting its message, and examining how its message has been applied and ignored over the course of subsequent American history.
The book is divided into three sections. In the first, entitled "the Crisis of Creation", Avlon looks at how Washington decided to write and publish the farewell, how it was produced, with the aid of contributing editors Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, how it was almost published four years earlier, and how it was the product of Washington's leadership experience, both as commander of the Continental Army and as a two-term president, presiding over a factionalized administration.
The second part breaks the book down into "Washington's Pillars of Liberty", the six core principles of the address: (1) national unity, (2) the dangers of political factions, (3) fiscal discipline, (4) virtue and religion, (5) education and (6) a foreign policy of independence. In each of these areas, Avlon traces Washington's history with that pillar, and explains how his experience formed his opinion, and how the relevant sections of the address came to be composed.
In the final section of the book, "The Aftermath of the Idea", Avlon looks at how the address came to viewed by subsequent leaders to support seemingly alternate positions of isolationism and entry into war, and how the advice has been ignored, sometimes on principled grounds, and sometimes severely contorted, with the low point being when the American Nazi Party sought to present itself as Washington's disciples at their rally at Madison Square Garden in 1939, selfishly using it to convince America to keep out of the Second World War.
Avlon offers a very thoughtful and considered analysis of Washington's enduring message, and especially of how it has weathered the time since its publication in 1796. He explains that Washington's tenets were never meant to create a straight-jacket of absolutes to apply to every situation. As he explains, Washington understood that history was composed of life-cycles unique to their time, but always rooted in human nature. This book is quite academic at times, but as Avlon presents it, that's not a bad thing. Important governing principles should never be confused with fortune cookie logic, and Avlon provides the reader with an appreciation of the complexities involved in Washington's basic tenets, and of how these have weathered the test of time. This is a very careful and interesting examination of the fundamentals of government as Washington saw them, timeless, and at the same time evolving. John Avlon invites the reader to accompany him on a thinking person's excursion of them, with a view to understanding their importance today.