> The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.

> Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence therefore it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

The second paragraph has a lot of emotional appeal, but the technical context in which it was written has massively changed. When Washington wrote this, intercontinental travel and commerce were powered by sails or horses, and the most advanced weapons were repeating guns that were cranked by hand; the most efficient printing press or workshops might have been driven by a water wheel.

Engines to power trains and ships, air travel, intercontinental missiles, satellite surveillance, instantaneous global communication, real-time video streaming, and programmatic information synthesis and distribution were unimaginable in the 18th century, but unavoidable military and economic realities in the 21st, and have great strategic importance. A nostalgic retreat into autarchy and isolation is about as realistic as erecting large statues to ward off natural disasters.

You have, without any context or explanation, quoted something which presumably states a point you are trying to make, one which seems at best a non sequitur to the parent's post if I am reading your intent correctly.

Care to use your own words to carry on the conversation rather than just stirring the pot with a seemingly unrelated and controversial opinion stated via someone else's words?

I think not getting too enmeshed in their politics is still generally a good idea though I doubt that George Washington of all people would be unsympathetic towards people fighting for their own independence and liberty against a foreign power looking to strip them of those rights

Since context is important the speech also references the Neutrality proclamation of 1793 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proclamation_of_Neutrality). I would say the stuff on European policy needs to be viewed through the lens of the wars there at the time (which I think are these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_First_Coalition)

When Washington was giving this speech, France, the key benefactor to the infant United States, was in the middle of a pretty nasty revolution and probably really wanted some repayment for their help. So the context here might also be relevant, the US was basically saying "Uhh...yeah, as a matter of principle we really shouldn't get involved with whatever crazy stuff Europe is up to!"

So I think the context matters a lot, and I agree if Washington were alive today (and somehow able to function with the grievous age-related illnesses he'd be suffering) he'd generally support the established transatlantic alliance.

Washington was aligned with the Federalists, who were roughly speaking pro-British and anti-French. The antifederalists took the opposite tack.

You can see what the anti-federalists thought of this generally; Paine’s open letter to Washington airing some of the grievances is an interesting read.

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-20-02-...

He also let Thomas Paine rot in a French prison.

> So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith.

A key part.

Sure was a simpler time. Now we have Russia pointing nuclear weapons at all our major population centers, and the engagements we have with a number of our allies against this nation are not being fulfilled, in bad faith.

Yet the USA was the only country to drop atomic weapons on civilian populations. If country X didn't have nukes & wanted to remain sovereign, the USA + global banking cartel would impose a regime change. It would be better if relations were better. But that would require acting in good faith...which hasn't been the case. Most people want peace & for the various powers to act in good faith...as most people don't benefit from war, sanctions, tariffs, excessive taxation, & the multitude of other statutes that benefit centralized power, bureaucracy, oligopoly, & middle-men imposing rent.

All of this requires well-defined & consistent application of ethics. However, the language of ethics has been tortured to justify coercion & self-serving interests. The simulacra of morality is merely cover for will to power impulses.

Nonetheless, I believe that most people want fairness & morality. However, most people also face a dilemma at times. Sacrifice on the hill of Principles or gain something such as a home, food, wealth, ownership, control over something. If people choose Principles, then they may lose opportunities. If they choose to accumulate wealth in conflict with Principles, then the society rots, one selfish action at a time. Unfortunately, the social rules are often set up to create this conflict. And the simulacra of morality is a tempting panacea to have the "best of both worlds". Or one can do the hard work to choose a better set of Principles to take care of their needs & create peace & prosperity for most if not all.

> Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or very remote relation.

Right, but the implication he makes is now vacuous, as the precondition of ‘remote relation’ was no longer true once the world became ‘smaller’ through improvements in transportation, logistics, and communication.

Unfortunately people as a mass, don’t tend to learn from history. Or at least forget the lessons from history fairly easily. Maybe we are doomed to repeat the same historical lessons.

The US has been a 'democratic republic' for almost 250 years, so many generations have learned.

Such government has thrived in every culture and place, from East Asia to South Asia to almost all the Americas, many parts of Africa, Europe of course. Somehow, democracy works exceptionally well - far better than any alternative ever has - and is resilient.

... unless the people are somehow convinced that it is not, that it is not important, and they despair and give up.

Representative democracy only works when the people of the nation actually drive the formation of said government. The last 70+ years have shown that it explicitly does not work when imposed by third parties. Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, China, and Vietnam are all examples of this failure.

It’s not that those people should not have a say in their government. It’s that they clearly don’t have the coordinated will to organize it sustainably.

Maybe the rest of us just lucked out to have society form at just the right sweet spot of information spread without information control. But there’s clearly something different about all those places that it didn’t quite end up the way the rest of us would consider acceptable.

> Afghanistan, Iraq

Afghanistan never had an effective democratic government; Iraq may have one now.

> ... Iran, China, and Vietnam are all examples of this failure.

China, and Vietnam never had democratic governments or anything like them. Iran has had some semblence of one, but on a limited basis (ultimate power lies with religious leaders, who can even ban people from running in elections).

But parts of China have had very successful democratic governments - in Taiwan currently and formerly in Hong Kong.

> there’s clearly something different about all those places that it didn’t quite end up the way the rest of us would consider acceptable.

Why is there something 'clearly different'? There are many explanations. All the evidence we have is that people in China love and preserve democracy whenver they can.

Indeed. However, parliamentary democracies have a better track record of stability than federal structures (modeled after that of the US). Adjust for cultural and historical differences as you see fit, but the US has heretofore been an outlier.

Matt Yglesias wrote a great summary of this awhile back- https://www.vox.com/2015/3/2/8120063/american-democracy-doom...

Very interesting read as an Australian. Helped me with understanding why US politics feels so different to Australia despite the cultural similarities.

Thanks for sharing, that was a great and prescient article.

That's the very article I remembered, but couldn't find, when I wrote my comment.Your google-fu is better than mine!

Yet seemingly a large part of the population has forgotten the lessons from even 8 or 9 decades ago, the sequence of events that have led to events of the 30s and 40s.

Democracy is also not that old as far as human history goes. Empires and kingdoms have lasted longer, even individual ones.

Our system of government was predicated on different geographical interests pushing against each other, it was well understood that if “the rich” grouped together and put their class interest above the interests of the people around them, our system would fail. This language against factions, the paternal idea that rich elites would act against their own economic interests to serve some higher good… it had failed before it even started. We didn’t make it one term. While Washington was giving this speech there were already factions, that is why he was cautioning against them.

Two parties, each controlled entirely by corporate interests ferrying out puppets for the populace to choose from

The American republic is failing in exactly the ways Plato and Socrates would've predicted it would.

At this point I’d settle for the party that at least pretends to follow the rules they make.

It’s better for my mental

Washington was mad about political parties because his federalist-aligned coalition was collapsing. He resigned because of his declining health and because it was no longer obvious he could win if be ran again, and he feared the resulting reputational damage. There was extreme political contention at the time and Washington’s administration was becoming increasingly controversial. This very deeply bothered him, because he didn’t like opposition.

In the words of Thomas Paine: > Being now once more abroad in the world I began to find that I was not the only one who had conceived an unfavourable opinion of Mr. Washington. It was evident that his character was on the decline as well among Americans as among foreigners of different nations. From being the chief of a government, he had made himself the chief of a party; and his integrity was questioned, for his politics had a doubtful appearance.

This culminated in his federalist allies later criminalizing free speech and deporting dissidents under the Alien and Sedition Acts.

The farewell address was an explicitly political speech and you should read it in its historical context. You wouldn’t read Bush, Obama, or Trump speeches and take them at face value. Don’t read past ones at face value.

Ah, 2025 HN, where historical observations are downvoted if they don't conform to the governing mythos.

Please don't do this. I know it's frustrating, but it's against the site guidelines (more than one, actually) and only makes the threads worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Yes, ok, sorry dang. I promise to only post thoughtful comments that add value with the absolute minimum sprinkling of sarcasm. I do believe I'm trying to contribute to a diversity of opinion on HN and make arguments that others might not have encountered before, but I see that I've violated some of the rules. I've read and committed the guidelines to memory now. Can you please unthrottle me? It's hard to engage in substantive back-and-forth if I can't post more than a couple of times a day.

Ok, done!

Thank you!

I don't mind (and dang, I hope you don't mind me responding to this post.) I think many people tend to reflexively downvote things that seem contrarian or contradict what they know, and that it's probably generally a good thing. Lies My Teacher Told Me gets into some of the issues with the way American history is taught, and even though we recognize that the cherry tree story is a fable now, people are generally taught a mythologized view of Washington and the other founders in school, and that's partly the basis for our civic religion. So when you come across a comment like I wrote, I think it's easy to dismiss it. And that's by design! Even back then, people knew they were consciously creating a myth surrounding Washington and other figures. Take this letter from Benjamin Rush to John Adams:

> The venerable Charles Thompson now above 80 years of Age, now and then calls to see me. I once suggested to him to write secret Memoirs of the American Revolution. “No—No said he I will not.—I could not tell the truth without giving great offence. Let the World admire our patriots and heroes. Their supposed talents and Virtues (where they were <[. . .])> so) <will> by commanding invitation will serve the Cause of patriotism, and of Our Country.” I concur in this Sentiment, and therefore I earnestly request that you will destroy this letter [largely about Washington's failings] as soon as you read it. I do not even wish it to be known that General W: was deficient in that Mark of true Greatness which so preeminently characterized Julius Cæsar, Henry the 4th: of France, and Frederick the 2nd: of Prussia,—the talent to forgive.

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-5755

I think this is true of a lot of history, really - anything "important" we've assumed a mythologized view of, mediated by schools and Hollywood. Myth is more powerful than reality, so I think until you bury yourself in primary and contemporary sources, it can come across as almost conspiratorial. And of course, I am not saying that Rush, or the antifederalists, were correct in all their criticisms or all they said: only that Washington's comments must be understood contextually, and that's almost always missing when people refer to the Farewell Address, or at best they have a very simplified view of the situation that preserves the mythologization of Washington.

That's an interesting take. Washington did not support the federalists in all things, in fact he likely prevented most of their extremist actions while he was in power. The citizen Genet affair had concerned him greatly, because Jefferson had invited the French in against the wishes of the state department. Sort of like Trump cozying up to dictators like Putin now, he worried about people putting faction over country, or putting themselves over the constitution. Your disapproval of Washington does explain a lot to me about how we've gotten to our current point, and tells me that he was not wrong to worry.

It was a coalition and Washington was certainly one of them. The Jay treaty was a defining moment in party identification.

If you read the letters I linked, I think you’ll find that my comment was fairly apropos - as in the Rush letter, you’re leveraging an idea of Washington they deliberately falsified. And of course a lot of the controversy was over the Constitution! (see the Paine letter I linked in the thread). Washington was a nakedly political animal and anyone that disagreed with him got labeled a factionalist, and anti federalist, etc. complaining about political parties was just his dressed up language for complaining about dissent.

Yes, politics was a blood sport back then for sure. Both sides absolutely hated each other, the Federalists were trying to rebuild the British federalist system (sneak peek: they were proven correct by history) and the Democratic-Republicans wanted to maintain the southern slave economy. Washington was attempting to maintain the coalition in any way possible ... a hoop for 13 staves. He recognized how Adams and Hamilton were just as bad as Jefferson and Madison, but he sided with them because he recognized they were ultimately correct. (And have been proven by 250 years of history to have been correct. Without federalism we have no modern banking, we have no strong federal government. We have no industrial economy. Fun fact, without it, we lose to the Axis powers! Why we continue to debate this is completely beyond me.) Yes, Washington was sometimes imperfect, because he had to make tough choices, like keeping us out of the French revolution. And remember that ultimately Hamilton supported Jefferson over Aaron Burr, that villain.

> He recognized how Adams and Hamilton were just as bad as Jefferson and Madison, but he sided with them because he recognized they were ultimately correct.

This would be a stronger argument if you had letters or direct quotes by him making statements like this. Meanwhile, Adams was shilling for Washington to be addressed as "His Majesty", not the kind of argument you make for someone you're not strongly backing.

> Fun fact, without it, we lose to the Axis powers!

This is a bizarre argument, as if the justification for the federalist side is a war happening one hundred years later, and which the US had no particular national-interest reason to involve itself in. (The Japanese would have not attacked Pearl Harbor without American interventionism in the Asian-Pacific.) It's impossible to say what US politics would have looked like if the antifederalists had won sooner (the federalist party totally collapsed after Jefferson was elected) so I have no idea what the basis for this counterfactual is anyway.

I find your anti-Washington takes equally bizarre, to be honest. I've read the biographies of most of the founding fathers, and in none of them does anyone strike out against the great man himself. Adams had his own problems, and Washington was very much not on board with the idea of a king, and explicitly told Adams to call him "Mr. President".

The letters I linked in this thread are an interesting place to get started: Benjamin Rush to John Adams: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-5755

Thomas Paine to George Washington: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-20-02-...

Another good source would be the newspapers from the time: the Philadelphia Aurora had a good for the circulation of the time, was a "respected" paper (as far as that went then), and has lots of very nasty things to say about Washington during his presidency. It (and a selection of other papers) will give you a vastly better idea of the political climate than just about anything else you can get.

You can see a wide swath of people who knew Washington thought very poorly of him, especially militarily.

> I've read the biographies of most of the founding fathers, and in none of them does anyone strike out against the great man himself.

Reading biographies is better than nothing, but they usually have an agenda. Not that say, Paine or Rush didn't, but we're talking about how Washington was view among his contemporaries and how the speech was received and understood at the time. Later works are going to be clouded with different agendas, particularly the mythologization I mentioned.

I've read most of Paine and as much as I like him, he was an iconoclast, un-pragmatic to the core. He's not going to have a good opinion of anybody. Rush did not like Washington's military style, because he did not understand the necessity for fiat decision-making in an army ... again he was unrealistic and later grew to respect the man. So yes you can cherry-pick (npi) people who at one point or another did not like him. Politics is a blood-sport and anyone who has been in a leadership position understands you cannot make everybody happy ... that does not change in basic fact that Washington was at all times trying to make the right decisions for all 13 of the colonies. At core he was a pragmatist who believed in federal strength and yes Hamilton did much of his thinking for him. He did not love the English or the French too much and while Jefferson and Madison benefited from their friendship with France, they also got the Capitol burned. It would have been great to see what a President Hamilton would have done instead of Madison, but the Federalists pushed too far and Adams screwed that up nicely and ultimately destroyed his party.

The Rush letter is from 1812, not early on, and also cites many of Washington's "friends" saying the same things.

It was actually fairly widely held among his contemporaries that he was a poor military leader.