I am now, and have always been,
a big George Washington fan. I think I
read my first biography of him in fifth grade.
In seventh grade we staged a play about him – they didn’t like the
script I drafted because it had too much history in it. Ah well.
Once, when I was a “Washington
puppy," one of the many young adults who move to the city after college to
begin work and life in earnest, a friend of mine came to visit. (Actually, a lot of friends came to visit
those first few years. We were of an age
when a floor to sleep on was considered free lodging, and Washington was a
desirable locale to visit. But I
digress.) He brought with him a friend,
a young lady from Germany on her first U.S. visit. As we drove around viewing the monuments, she
asked, quite earnestly, “Why is there an enormous obelisk at the center of your city?” That question sticks with me today because I
failed to deliver a suitable answer, saying only that George Washington was our
first president and is considered the father of our country.
Perhaps it was because of my shock
at her apparent ignorance that I settled for such a rote answer. But to this day I regret my failure to
explain George Washington’s signal unicity in history, our nation’s and the
world’s. His military, political, and economic
leadership, and his personal integrity, inspired generations of American
citizens to do great things at the service of our nation. But even all that would not be worthy of the
great monument on the Mall.
He is the indispensable man, the
sine qua non of our experiment in
ordered liberty. Without him, there
would not be United States of America governed by the Constitutional order we
enjoy. Because he did what no man before
had ever done: having been given complete power, he voluntarily laid it down. He relinquished the Presidency he had defined
according to a schedule. No one
could have made him do that.
And ever since, once or twice a
decade, the most powerful man on earth lets go of power and walks away, and
someone else takes it up. The throngs
tend to be so fixated on the personalities involved that the astonishing
phenomenon can go unremarked. But that obelisk
stands to remind us all that it could very well have been otherwise.
Why bother you with this
observation now? Because the day he laid
down his power, he thought it important to say this:
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political
prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would
that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these
great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and
citizens? The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and
to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private
and public felicity.
Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for
reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths
which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice?
And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality
can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence
of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both
forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious
principle.
It could very well be otherwise,
indeed. A blessed Independence Day to you
all.
Monsignor Smith
