Joe Kashi, my friend and fellow MIT alum, was mulling over George Washington, and had this to say.

I recently reread Washington’s Farewell Address, am open  letter which he circulated to citizens the new United States upon leaving the Presidency after two terms.  Washington’s Farewell embodies great wisdom about the proper course of statesmanship and the conduct of human affairs.  His address bears careful reading and rereading in our present day.  

The opening passages of the letter are typical of the rhetorical flourishes of that time and can be skipped.

Washington was not at the head of his class as a general, but even though largely self-taught, he was at least good enough for the job at hand.  More than once, he saved the day with personal audacity in the midst of shot and exploding shell.  The Battle of Monmouth, NJ particularly stands out in that regard.  Compared to Washington, Grant probably had a better grasp of grand strategy and how to combine tenacity with a variety of operations in order to win a war that was largely inconclusive before Grant’s star rose.   

As a general, Washington also had the humility and wisdom to listen carefully to others, setting aside his own ego and plans to accept sage advice from other officers.  Rochambeau, for example, talked Washington out of attacking fortified, heavily garrisoned New York City in favor of the risky, arduous quick-march to Yorktown, trapping Cornwallis in what become the decisive battle of the Revolutionary War.     

Basically, Washington pursued a mixed strategy of Fabian tactics combined with some major defeats but bigger victories like Yorktown.  This in itself shows mature wisdom and good planning, given the disparity of resources and experience.  

On the Fabian side of strategy, as long as one has an army in being, even a small one that may get beaten up on occasion,  one is not defeated so long as  your army remains in being as a threat while you wait for the adversary’s morale and/or public support to collapse before your own tattered army does.  Vietnam is a good example – we won nearly all of the battles tactically but they won the war by outlasting the French and then the US.   

Fabian approaches can be considered a variety of what we now term asymmetric warfare in the sense that a small military force can tie down a much bigger one that has to guard many places.  The Fabian concept of a fleet in being was one crux of Alfred Thayer Mahan’s highly influential 1890s theory of the interaction of sea power, diplomacy, and history.   

My own sense of the mature Washington seems exemplified less by his ability to conduct an ultimately successful war on a shoestring than by his embodiment of the ideals of the Age of Enlightenment and by his role in the postwar creation of the Society of the Cincinnati, senior Revolutionary War officers who were to emulate the Roman general Cincinnatus.   

The facts surrounding Cincinnatus are somewhat unclear historically.  They generally agree that he had been disparaged and unjustly cast out of office by political machinations but, when summoned back to duty in a time of crisis, left his farm to defend his community.  After the crisis passed, Cincinnatus turned down offers that he remain in power and  voluntarily relinquished the office of “dictator”, which was then an official Roman office appointed for one year with unlimited power in times of crisis, foregoing his opportunity for continued power and for revenge.   

What a refreshing contrast to the present ethos.  

Many of those who currently say that they want to turn the constitutional and legal clock back to the early days of our Constitutional government are seemingly not well versed in its actual ideals and history.  Perhaps they might benefit by learning of the spirit of those Revolutionary days, which was in many ways the embodiment of the Age of Enlightenment, of Voltaire and Montaigne, of Locke and Hume, of checks and balances, of selfless service, and all that.

Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, and others certainly had their share of human flaws, but their overall “package” very much transcended their inevitable human flaws, certainly when they are properly judged in the context of their own times rather than from a safe, comfortable self-righteousness after 250 years of social evolution.

I believe that we can learn a great deal from our Founding Fathers and from their intellectual times, but only if we approach their history with an open mind and understand that the spirit underlying the  founding of the American Experiment was in fact the first political embodiment of the Age of Enlightenment, of a modern democracy, and of selfless service to one’s community at great personal risk, not as an opportunity to selfishly grab for personal power or greater wealth.

An excellent place to start that understanding is by going back to primary sources and reading the full original documents, not summaries, especially Washington’s Farewell Address to the new nation for which he labored and risked all to bring into being.