Summary: (Before He Was A Dead White Guy), George Washington Was A Revolutionary Freedom Fighter and A Rock Star of His Day
Too many of today’s youth have not been taught the amazing story of George Washington and his legacy as a freedom fighter in the American Revolution.
Young people commonly view their elders as inferior. This is nothing new. It’s a curious natural law, whereby the less experienced and knowledgeable somehow conclude that they are superior to those with decades of more life under their belts.
Old folks, for one thing, are slower—in speech, in movement, and in their general reactions. Senior citizens get in the way (literally) of young people, cramping youths’ style and often thwarting juvenile desires. Sophomoric wisdom holds that old people, especially those geezers like George Washington who lived more than two hundred years ago, are just not cool.
Yet older generations have a much keener awareness of many things, including the fragility of freedom. America’s seniors grew up in the Cold War, under the dark shadow of the menacing Soviet Union and its communist allies around the world. In the olden days, schools taught kids that America was good. Unlike the angry and often violent youth today who routinely desecrate memorials to early American heroes, senior citizens learned to appreciate George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and the other Founding Fathers who liberated us from British tyranny.
The Aristocracy of Feudal Europe
Speaking of Britain, I recently enjoyed an extended trip to Scotland with my son, where we hiked in the stunning Highlands, toured ancient castles, and visited countless pubs along the way.
One might say that, as good sons of Scotland, we dutifully drank our way through the Fatherland.
Both of us are history majors, so we enthusiastically absorbed the stories of endless battles throughout Scotland’s turbulent past. When the Scots were not fighting Romans, Vikings, or English, they were fighting amongst themselves. Of course, the peasants did most of the fighting.
In thousands of instances, when they weren’t needed for war, the poorest of those peasants were driven from their homes by aristocratic landlords. The old feudal system relegated the peasantry to stagnant lives of servitude and hopeless poverty. Upward mobility was not a thing in those days.
Coincidentally, while on my trip, I was reading Cyrus Ansary’s masterpiece “George Washington, Dealmaker-In-Chief”. Ansary describes in detail how Washington and other colonial Americans were stifled by the British class system that severely restricted early Americans’ ability to conduct business and build wealth.
Washington chaffed under the British system. Despite oppressive rules forbidding the creation of American banks or local currency, and strict requirements that all trade be conducted solely through British trading companies, Washington overcame the odds, emerging as one of the most innovative entrepreneurs in the colonies and amassing an impressive fortune.
Washington represented everything good in the new breed of Americans. He was self-made, leaving home at the age of sixteen to work on the wild frontier as a surveyor. He was bold, leading dangerous military expeditions in his twenties. He was inquisitive, constantly experimenting with ways to improve his farming and commercial enterprises. And he was a creative dealmaker, a rare wealth creator with the ability to recognize opportunity and craft “win-win” solutions that benefitted all parties.
Yet in the eyes of the British, Washington could never amount to more than a lowly colonial. Without the birthright of the largely corrupt and entitled aristocrats that ruled over America, Washington and his American peers were treated contemptuously as subjects, not citizens.
George Washington: Freedom-Fighter and Revolutionary
Washington fought against colonialism, which (one would think) should give him “street cred” among today’s college activists. Maybe he’s just not their kind of revolutionary. History teaches us that there are good revolutionaries and bad revolutionaries. Washington was clearly a good one.
In 1775, he became a freedom fighter. He took command of the rag-tag Continental Army, refusing to accept any remuneration for his services, which kept him away from his beloved Mount Vernon for roughly eight years of grueling military service. He and his fellow Founding Fathers pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the then-radical notion that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Modern Americans take so much for granted and too often forget the debt that we owe to men like Washington who risked it all for the sake of liberty. Our founders not only cast aside the shackles of colonial servitude, but under Washington’s leadership, they created a political and economic system that unleashed a spirit of free enterprise and innovation the likes of which the world had never seen. The new American model produced unparalleled prosperity, resulting in upward mobility for millions of citizens, most of whom escaped the smothering caste system of Europe.
A huge segment of today’s American population is descended from those oppressed peasants of Britain. The suffering and abuse of our forefathers morphed into an exuberant spirit when they reached American shores. Cut loose in this great Land of Second Chances, with no limits on what they could achieve, they revealed the power of unrestrained human potential. They showed the world what ambition, hard work, innovation, and drive can produce.
While a smattering of privileged aristocrats from Europe settled in America, most immigrants were either peasants or younger sons who could not expect to inherit much under the British tradition of primogeniture. The comfortable and privileged folks usually stayed behind to enjoy lives of luxury in their regal estates. The hungry and ambitious, on the other hand, came to America.
That hungry and ambitious drive fueled the men who eventually became American revolutionaries and freedom fighters. Men like Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and Sam Adams, who believed in the radical notion of meritocracy. Unlike British aristocrats, Americans were by necessity industrious, hard-working people.
Hard work brings out the best in people. In contrast to the devil’s workshop of idleness, the physical demands of strenuous manual labor rendered Americans hardy, strong, and full of testosterone. Perhaps those rigorous exertions generated higher levels of endorphins or other chemicals in the brain that made early Americans mentally healthier, happier, optimistic, creative, and fertile.
By many estimates, one-third of the American population in 1776 was in favor of independence. One-third remained loyal to King George III. And the remaining third was neutral. (I suspect that the descendants of that last group are the same ones who today contentedly consume bags of Cheetos while binge-watching Netflix and porn).
One-Third Made All the Difference
The one-third who remained loyal to the Crown were known as Tories. I would compare them to the Ivy League-educated coastal elites today whose loyalties lie with the Beltway Uniparty, the Military Industrial Complex, the readership of The New York Times, Big Tech, and the Deep State. Many of those Tories were driven into exile after Washington’s miraculous victory at Yorktown in 1781.
The one-third who won—revolutionaries and freedom fighters like George Washington—were the badasses of their day. Not only had they risked it all, but they had won an incredible victory against seemingly impossible odds. And they were determined to make their long revolutionary struggle worthy of the blood, sweat, and tears they had courageously shed for it.
Modern academia, with its overwhelmingly hostile attitude toward our Founding Fathers, is fond of characterizing our Revolutionary heroes as oppressive, white, slave-owning men. Rather than celebrating the Spirit of 1776 that motivated our Founders and gave us freedom and prosperity, these smug academics unfairly and wrongly emphasize only the victims of America’s past.
In truth, men like Washington were not only remarkably bold and inspirational to their contemporaries—veritable rock stars of their age—but they were also radical and innovative thinkers. They rejected the rigid, old-world class system that limited how far a man could go in life. The notion expressed by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal was an uplifting and inspirational idea, shattering the feudal mindset of their British rulers and giving hope to millions of new Americans.
Critics such as Nikole Hannah-Jones and her New York Times-promoted 1619 Project are quick to point out that African Americans remained in bondage for decades after the Revolution. The Declaration of Independence, with its assertion that all men were created equal, did not immediately apply to slaves. But such criticism is a classic case of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
The Declaration of Independence was an aspirational document. While it did not result in the immediate liberation of African Americans, or for that matter equal rights for women, it set America on an irreversible course toward freedom that was shared by no other country on the planet.
As Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said, “When the architects of our Great Republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.”
To those who criticize the Founding Fathers as racist and oppressive, one might ask, “Compared to what?” Compared to nearly every other nation on the planet in the 1780s, where slavery had been an ugly reality since the dawn of time, America and its radical Founders were advancing a truly revolutionary idea when they proclaimed that all men are created equal and that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.
George Washington was appropriately hailed as the heroic Father of our country. His image adorned almost every home in the new nation, and many called for him to be made a king. He rejected that talk and presided over the Constitutional Convention, which resulted in a system that deliberately limited the power of government with checks and balances to prevent the rise of tyrannical despotism and to safeguard civil liberties.
Washington’s vision for America included not only limited government, but an economic system that protected private property and rewarded innovation through patent protection. Under Washington’s leadership, a new banking system enabled capital formation. Businesses could incorporate and issue shares of stock, soon leading to an era of unprecedented prosperity and opportunity. He laid the groundwork to make America the greatest nation on Earth.
Conclusion: George Washington deserves the recognition and admiration of Americans today for his remarkable service fighting for America’s freedom in the Revolutionary War.
After serving two terms as our first president, Washington famously stepped away from the power of the executive office. In the spirit of Cincinnatus, he returned to private life on his farm at Mount Vernon. Upon hearing that Washington planned to forfeit his power, his old adversary King George III remarked, “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”
As we approach the 250th anniversary of American independence, we owe it to Washington and his fellow revolutionaries to stop and reflect on not only their brilliance and inspired vision, but their amazing courage and willingness to sacrifice all for the cause of liberty.
When he died in 1799, Washington was eulogized by his fellow revolutionary Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee (the father of Robert E. Lee) as “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” Those who knew him best loved him most.
Yes, Washington and the other Founding Fathers are now “dead white guys.” But when they lived, they lived with an audacity and a love of liberty as freedom fighters that should fill our hearts with gratitude and inspire us and future generations by their unmatched examples. Their modern critics, by comparison, are small and insignificant little people.
Cheers to George Washington and all the brave heroes of 1776. May their spirit of liberty catch fire in the hearts of a new generation of young Americans.
Gib Kerr is the author of Un-Cancel Robert E. Lee and States of Rebellion. Visit www.gibkerr.com.
September, 2024
