Despite assurances from several Republicans that they’ve spoken at length with Senator Mitch McConnell, hospitalized five weeks ago, we have yet to hear a single public word from the eighty-four-year-old Kentuckian himself. Governor Andy Beshear did the proper thing this week by sending the senator a letter requesting a candid accounting of his health.
Kentuckians, and indeed the nation, are entitled to such transparency from those they elect to high office. This is not a partisan demand but a democratic one.
I find myself in rare agreement with Republican Representative Marlin Stutzman of Indiana, whose unusually candid remarks distinguish him from the practiced evasions of so much contemporary politics:
“You know, just the things that I’ve heard and seen from some friends is that he’s obviously not doing well, but don’t know if he’s alive or has passed away. His constituents deserve answers where he is at,” Stutzman said.
“I think that the governor of Kentucky has every right to ask after three weeks that no one has said anything. As a Republican, I think we need to hold our own party accountable. And so, the fact that we haven’t heard anything really from Senator McConnell is very discouraging and concerning,” Stuzman added.
Politics, by its partisan nature, so often assumes the countenance of Machiavelli, cloaking its embarrassments in the respectable garments of euphemism and doublespeak until concealment itself becomes a civic virtue.
Stutzman’s plainspoken willingness to question his own party is refreshing not because it is extraordinary in principle, but because it has become extraordinary in practice.
Democrats are hardly immune to the same temptation. For months they brushed aside mounting evidence that Maine’s Graham Platner was unfit for public office, choosing loyalty over candor until the testimony of a liberal woman made further denial impossible. One is left to wonder how differently events might have unfolded had the whistleblower been a conservative.
Such questions are uncomfortable precisely because they expose a habit shared by both parties: the instinct to protect power first and truth afterward.
I didn’t celebrate America’s 250th birthday yesterday. How could I, with Trump still at the helm of a listing ship? Our country is so deeply fractured that I lack confidence our ship of state can ever be restored to an even keel again.
While the mid-terms loom, a new, more radical faction seems to be taking hold, offering simple remedies, under the aegis of expanded government, to complex problems that may well prove incendiary to America’s best interests.
History is being distorted—accompanied by the rise of a heated rhetoric, the past filtered through a modern lens, as if we can sanitize our heritage by consigning to oblivion our flawed heroes who nonetheless made America possible.
To contend, as some now do, that the Revolution was fought primarily to preserve slavery is a profound untruth. In 1776, Great Britain had no intention of dismantling the institution. While Royal Governor Lord Dunmore famously offered freedom to slaves who fled rebel masters to fight for the Crown, his proclamation was a cynical tactic of war, not a moral crusade; Dunmore himself owned a hundred slaves whom he exempted from his proclamation, and Britain did not outlaw slavery in its empire until 1833. The colonists revolted over representation and imperial overreach, not a defense of bondage.
Far from protecting slavery, the radical ideals unleashed by the Revolution ignited the Western world’s very first widespread abolitionist movement, a moral arc that would ultimately culminate in a bloody Civil War and Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
History taught from the periphery, filtered through rigid ideology or simplified into monolithic narratives, is intrinsically dangerous. It rests on a priori assumptions and is too often promulgated with dogmatism. True understanding requires nuance, humility, and courage.
Intolerance and intimidation increasingly menace our daily life. It’s a different America from the one I grew up with—dynamic, prosperous, a nation deserving of its patriotism.
And why not?
At the end of WWII, a victorious America was the sole nuclear power. It possessed an army of 14 million, an air force of 50,000 planes, and the largest naval force in history with nearly 7,000 ships, including 99 aircraft carriers.
Yet, alone among the global empires of history, America walked away from total dominion and chose peace over subjugation.
This is the America I remember and want back again.
As America increasingly turns its attention to politics with the midterms looming, there exist inherent dangers to guard ourselves against, the most prominent among them the ideologue who offers simple answers to complex problems, caters to popular sentiment, promises much, ignoring the consequences.
The foremost tragedies of twentieth-century history were wrought by the rise of autocrats—Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao—advocates of total government who were intolerant of dissension and bound by the collective dictum that the end justifies the means.
As the late Sir Isaiah Berlin cautioned, “All forms of tampering with human beings, getting at them, shaping them against their will to your own pattern, all thought control and conditioning is, therefore, a denial of that in men which makes them men and their values ultimate.”
Voters today must be discriminating, wary of the “brave new worlders” who would trade the painful, magnificent burden of personal choice for the comfortable chains of an enforced, singular truth.
It had seemed, for a fleeting moment, that congressional Republicans were emerging at last from their long cocoon, appearing ready to join Democrats in calling out President Trump’s profound blunder—not only in launching a 110-day war (Operation Epic Fury) heedless of its catastrophic risks, but in his subsequent appeasement of a rogue, murderous regime.
Initial Republican scrutiny was fierce, public, and remarkably direct. Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana openly declared the deal “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades,” thirteen American service members dead, families crushed at the pump, only for sanctions to be lifted and the bombing to stop.
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas was even more unsparing, capturing the core absurdity of the framework by warning that “history teaches that giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is a bad idea.” For a few days, it looked as though a genuine, unified groundswell of Republican consensus had taken shape.
What sparked this rare mutiny were emerging details of the newly brokered Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), reading less like calculated diplomacy and more like a wholesale capitulation by a president eager to flee a senseless conflict.
The concessions granted to Tehran are immediate and staggering. Through instant Treasury waivers, the administration has bypassed existing sanctions, leaving Iranian freighters entirely free to ship crude oil to China, their best customer.
A fragile 60-day period of free passage through the Strait of Hormuz has begun, yet the fundamental balance of power has been upended.
While negotiators commence talks on the vital issue of nuclear acquisition, the regime’s potent, increasingly long-range ballistic missile and drone capabilities receive no mention in the text. Neither do its beleaguered citizens—thousands of whom were killed by rooftop snipers last January, with many more imprisoned, including a Nobel Peace Prize winner, as state executions continue unabated.
Furthermore, the agreement features a deeply controversial provision to open the gates for a $300 billion reconstruction and development mechanism, effectively enriching the coffers of a regime that was bordering on total economic collapse.
Trump loudly protests that the windfall is conditional on Tehran’s behavior, promising that if they prove stubborn about their uranium stockpile, the U.S. will simply recommence its bombing. It is a hollow gamble, built on the unconscionable premise of offering a massive financial lifeline to a theocratic dictatorship.
Democrats recognize the MOU for exactly what it is: a desperate attempt by a frightened president, booed at public appearances, to walk away from a historic blunder.
They point out that trading away massive economic leverage upfront just to buy a 60-day dialogue leaves the United States in a vastly inferior strategic position than it occupied before the conflict began, back when Iran’s uranium enrichment was still capped.
For a brief window, initial Republican scrutiny gave teeth to a potential congressional resistance. Lawmakers began drafting legislation to strip the Executive Branch’s ability to issue these oil waivers, a move that would collapse the $300 billion mechanism.
Yet the glaring obstacle remains—the presidential veto. To truly stop the administration, Congress would require a two-thirds supermajority in both chambers—a hill that has suddenly become far too steep to climb.
The resistance effectively crumbled when Senator Lindsey Graham, who had previous dubbed the fund “a Marshall Plan with the Nazis still in charge,” executed his sharp turnabout. Initially vehemently opposed, the leading hawk offered a tepid endorsement of the agreement after a single closed-door briefing. Vice President JD Vance instantly weaponized Graham’s reversal, using it during a blunt White House press conference to excoriate a deeply disillusioned Israel, warning their cabinet to fall in line or risk losing their last major ally.
Once again, Trump’s immense gravitational pull has had its way, dampening conservative scrutiny and fracturing any hope of a unified legislative front.
The emperor wears no clothes, yet Capitol Hill has folded. We are left watching a presidency trade away hard-won geopolitical leverage for a temporary reprieve, like a used car salesman successfully selling the country a piece of junk.
I dare you to look at photographs of what Trump has done to the once pristine White House lawn—yesterday’s campus for a public UFC cage-match on the occasion of his turning eighty.
Meanwhile, the skeletal steel grids of his coveted ballroom, replacing the former historical East Wing, now surface above ground as he rushes to complete the project before the courts ultimately render their final verdict. The next project: his touted arch.
This morning he left the country for the annual G7 summit in Evian, France, leaving behind a polarized nation in supreme danger as he walks away from a senseless war that ultimately disrupted the economic welfare of many nations, including our own, achieving minimal returns.
Topping things off, Trump thanked Putin, whom he called before his departure like a child seeking parental approval, allegedly—with Xi Jinping as well for helping secure the present settlement by “not interfering.”
No thanks whatever for the Omani, Qatari, and Pakistani intermediaries who worked feverishly to secure this agreement. Rest assured, he’ll be reviving his campaign for the Nobel Prize.
In the negotiated ceasefire with Iran, the primary issue of Iran’s close proximity to creating a nuclear bomb has been deferred; its growing ballistic prowess, conceivably capable of striking the U.S. heartland, receives no mention.
Nevertheless, the effective U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has been immediately lifted, with billions in held Iranian assets and the undoing of sanctions to follow shortly. Trump, in keeping with his mercantile lusts, foresees an economic jackpot in a close partnership with Iran.
As for the fate of millions of repressed Iranians—7,000 murdered just last January, thousands still imprisoned, hangings continuing—Trump is indifferent to their suffering, on vivid display in this dubious agreement.
There is every likelihood that Iran will continue to violate any agreement. They are already contradicting his claims of a “toll-free” passage, proving they will use the threat of closure of the Hormuz waterway to gain their ends. What then?
As for Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, suspending the lobbing of Iranian-supplied missiles into Israel—that’s just not going to happen.
In truth, this dubious agreement paves the way for a chilling reality the media has completely failed to grasp: a nuclear domino effect across the Middle East.
If a transactional, unreliable America signals it will tolerate a near-nuclear Iran for the sake of mercantile optics, do we honestly believe Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates will merely stand by? We are staring down the barrel of a terrifying regional arms race, triggered by the collapse of Western deterrence.
Worse still is the immediate, existential scenario that should send goosebumps up your torso. It is a poorly kept secret that an isolated, cornered Israel is already a potent nuclear power, with an estimated arsenal of up to 90 plutonium warheads.
Sidelined from the ceasefire negotiations and facing what it perceives as an absolute threat of extinction, what stops Israel from deciding that a preemptive first strike on a dangerous Iran is its only path to survival?
By washing his hands of the conflict, Trump hasn’t created peace; he has backed a nuclear-armed ally into a corner where dropping the Big One becomes a logical choice.
As for the G7, Macron altered the starting date to accommodate Sunday’s bash. Musn’t upset the volatile president.
European leaders must now wade through the wreckage of his current unilateralism. Blinded previously by his February bombing of Iran, what hidden concessions lie buried?
In sum, we have an incompetent president devoid of any defined, consistent policy, ruthless to his critics, including members of his own party. Narcissistic, pecuniary, dictatorial, and omnivorously menacing, he is our Caesar.
His Brutus lies in a looming midterms Democratic sweep in both chambers, reducing his regime to a lame-duck presidency.
Still, the idea he’s in the White House for another two years—I don’t want to think about it!
I am not partisan when it comes to politics. I support those whom I believe best represent the interests of our country and its democratic institutions.
Unfortunately, as many of us recognize, we are now in imminent danger under an obviously incompetent, self-centered, reactionary president whose conduct increasingly places personal interests above national stability and global responsibility.
Not only has he launched an unnecessary and destabilizing conflict, he now appears willing to offer Iran terms that verge on appeasement in his haste to bring the crisis to an end—without meaningful guarantees regarding nuclear enrichment, missile delivery systems, or Tehran’s support for terrorist proxies throughout the region.
This is a pariah regime that brutalizes its own people under the cloak of religion, yet the administration’s posture suggests geopolitical calculation rather than principled strategy, particularly with China looming in the background ahead of his upcoming visit there.
Trump has long displayed an affinity for authoritarian leaders such as Putin and Xi Jinping, often showing greater respect for strongmen abroad than for democratic allies at home.
Meanwhile, climate change is ignored, Ukraine is increasingly abandoned, FEMA and Medicaid are weakened, violence spreads across international shipping lanes, and the economy shows growing signs of strain. The list is long, and the cumulative effect is profound national instability.
Midterm elections are still six months away, while this presidency has another two and a half years remaining. Congress, despite its constitutional responsibilities, appears unwilling to act.
The ship of state is listing badly, and unless the country changes course, this president may take us all down with him.
Why some of the world’s most documented abuses fail to generate sustained global response
Iran, by almost any measure, ranks among the world’s most repressive regimes, much of its coercive power cloaked in religious authority.
It has not hesitated to use lethal force against its own citizens and consistently ranks among the highest globally in executions and political imprisonment (Amnesty International, 2023; United Nations Human Rights Council, 2024).
In the aftermath of the 1979 revolution (1979–1981), mass executions targeted former officials of the Shah’s government, military personnel, and political opponents.
One of the most notorious episodes occurred in 1988, when Ayatollah Khomeini issued a secret fatwa ordering the execution of political dissidents, primarily leftists. Estimates range from 3,000 to 5,000 victims, though human rights organizations place the toll closer to 30,000. The state has never acknowledged these killings; mass graves have been concealed, and public mourning by families has been forbidden (Human Rights Watch, 2024; Amnesty International, 2023; UN Special Rapporteur reports on Iran).
More recently, during the 2019 protests triggered by fuel price increases, security forces killed approximately 1,500 people within days (Amnesty International, 2020).
In 2022–2023, the death of Mahsa Amini, arrested by the Morality Police for alleged hijab violations, sparked nationwide protests. Authorities claimed she died of a heart attack, but eyewitness accounts and leaked medical evidence suggested severe physical abuse. At least 415 protesters were killed, including around fifty children (Human Rights Watch, 2023; IranWire, 2026).
Reports of an even more extreme crackdown emerged following protests beginning in late December 2025. On January 6, 2026, the government reportedly shut down internet access to obscure its response, culminating in a major escalation on January 8.
Official figures claimed 3,117 deaths, though these are widely disputed. The Human Rights Activists News Agency estimates approximately 6,800 civilians killed, with thousands more detained (UK Parliament Commons Library, 2026).
Further reporting suggests even higher numbers, with intelligence-linked documents alleging over 36,000 deaths in just two days (Iran International, 2026). If accurate, this would represent one of the deadliest short-term crackdowns in modern history.
Analysis of verified victim lists indicates that 16.1% of those killed were under 18, drawn from across Iranian society (IranWire, 2026).
Beyond Human Targets
The regime’s record of violence extends beyond human rights.
In July 2022, more than 1,700 dogs were reportedly killed during a raid on the Gandalf Dog Shelter near Damavand. The operation was documented with photos and video, and the animals were reportedly vaccinated and sterilized, undermining any public health justification (Al Bawaba, 2022; One Green Planet, 2022). Fire trucks were deployed afterward to wash away the evidence. Several animal rights advocates who attempted to reach the shelter were arrested (Source: Iran International).
The response from major Western animal rights organizations was, by any measure, shameful. PETA issued a tweet or two. The Humane Society, the ASPCA, and World Animal Protection said nothing of substance. There were no sustained campaigns, no petitions with celebrity endorsements, no diplomatic pressure on Western governments to raise the matter with Iran.
Animal organizations genuinely wary of having their condemnations exploited by hawkish political actors to justify sanctions or military posturing toward Iran. While this is not an entirely unreasonable concern, it produces a paralysis in which documented atrocities go unaddressed to avoid political repercussions.
Dog ownership itself is increasingly restricted in Iran. Municipal bans now exist in eleven Iranian cities, forbidding dog-walking in public spaces (Iran International, 2025; Wikipedia, n.d.).
A proposed law—“Protection of the Public’s Rights Against Animals”—would require government permits for pet ownership, even for common animals such as cats and rabbits (Network for Animals, 2021).
Part of the rationale offered by authorities draws on religious interpretation. In many traditions of Islamic jurisprudence, dogs are considered ritually impure (najis), particularly in relation to saliva, based on certain hadith literature. While the Qur’an does not prohibit dogs and even depicts them in functional roles such as hunting and guarding, later legal interpretations in some schools of thought discouraged close domestic contact.
Importantly, these interpretations are not uniform across the Muslim world. In many Muslim-majority societies, dogs are widely kept as pets or working animals. However, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, clerical authorities have drawn on stricter interpretations to reinforce social stigma and justify periodic enforcement campaigns.
The result is a convergence of ideology and governance: religious framing reinforcing state control over private life, including animal ownership.
A Pattern of Silence
Despite extensive documentation, international response has often been uneven.
Many large Western NGOs lean left politically, and the Iranian regime has long been framed, however implausibly, as a victim of Western imperialism and sanctions. Forceful condemnation of Iranian state conduct sits uncomfortably within that worldview.
The same dynamic has led Western feminist organizations to largely sidestep sustained criticism of Iran’s mandatory hijab laws. The tension between anti-imperialism and universal rights, whether human or animal, is never cleanly resolved, and Iran consistently receives the benefit of the doubt.
This selective principle of bearing witness has a broader parallel. Holocaust photographs—mass graves, liberation of the camps—are reproduced in textbooks and museums on the entirely defensible grounds that visual evidence is essential to bearing witness and resisting denial. Yet equivalent documentation from contemporary atrocities is routinely suppressed or ignored. The principle turns out to be applied not universally, but according to whose suffering fits the prevailing political narrative.
“When it comes to Iran, nothing matters.” — Marjan Keypour (Jerusalem Post, 2022)
The result is a selective visibility of suffering—where political context shapes not only diplomatic response, but also moral attention.
Conclusion
From the mass executions of the 1980s to recent protest crackdowns and ongoing social controls, the record points to a sustained pattern of repression.
Yet international attention remains intermittent.
What stands out is not only the severity of the abuses, but the unevenness of the world’s willingness to consistently see them.
In moments of political outrage, we often hear that some “moral compact” has been broken between the government and the people, as though public life rests on an understood promise of honesty and good faith. It is a comforting idea. It’s also, I think, a naïve one.
The record we inherit suggests otherwise. Bill Clinton misled the public under oath. John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson deepened American involvement in the Vietnam War under a widening credibility gap. Franklin D. Roosevelt withheld the full truth of his condition from the electorate. These are not anomalies. They are reminders.
None of this excuses Donald Trump, whose conduct stands as an extreme case in its brazenness. But it does suggest that the deeper problem is not the breaking of a compact, but our belief that such a compact has ever governed political life in more than name.
Niccolò Machiavelli understood that those who govern must often act against truth while preserving its appearance. Thomas Hobbes argued that we submit to authority not because it is virtuous, but because it is necessary. Between them, the so-called compact begins to look less like a foundation than a useful fiction, one that steadies public faith even as it obscures political reality.
If that is so, then the question is not how to restore a moral politics, but how much of our moral life we should ever have entrusted to politics in the first place.
Here Henry David Thoreau offers a necessary restraint: that government is best which governs least, not because it is especially good, but because it is always liable to be otherwise.
And Wendell Berry reminds us, more quietly, that the work of responsibility does not belong first to governments at all, but to persons, living within limits, bound to places, accountable to one another in ways no distant authority can finally secure.
We have asked too much of politics, and in doing so, we have misunderstood it.
Power does not keep faith; it manages necessity. It persuades, it conceals, it endures. It cannot bear the weight of the moral order we would like to rest upon it.
That burden remains where it has always been—closer to home.
Not in the abstractions of the state, nor in the promises of those who govern, but in the small, stubborn practices of truthfulness and care: in what we say, what we refuse to say, what we permit, and what we will not.
If there is any compact worth defending, it is not the one we imagine between ourselves and power. It is the one we keep, or fail to keep, with one another.
On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched coordinated aerial strikes on Iran, ostensibly to induce regime change and secure stability in the Middle East.
Central to this strategy was the expectation of a mass popular uprising—something glimpsed in January 2026, when tens of thousands of unarmed civilians took to the streets and were met with lethal force. Estimates suggest as many as 30,000 were killed, 7000 independently confirmed. The regime they opposed—a repressive Islamic theocracy entrenched since 1979—remains intact.
This is a war America is unlikely to win.
Despite the destruction of command centers, arsenals, and the targeted killing of senior leadership, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran has demonstrated a capacity for resilience that was either underestimated or ignored.
Its response has been asymmetric and expansive: ballistic missiles and drone strikes aimed not only at Israel but at a widening circle of nations hosting American bases—Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Recent launches have extended even farther, toward Crete, Turkey, and the joint UK–U.S. base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, 2400 miles distant.
At such range, the perimeter of vulnerability shifts. Southeastern Europe comes into view; with further technological refinement, even cities such as Rome or Berlin may not remain beyond reach; in a decade, the United States.
As this conflict widens, its economic consequences are already apparent. Iran’s disruption of the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil supply passes, has driven prices upward, with projections rising sharply. The leverage is stark: Iran need not defeat the United States militarily to impose severe costs. It need only prolong the conflict.
The political implications are equally stark. Domestic opposition is mounting here at home, shaped less by geopolitics than by inflation, felt daily in grocery bills and at the gas pump. A war that amplifies those pressures becomes difficult to sustain, regardless of its stated aims.
Even proposed escalations such as a seizure of Kharg Island, which handles a significant portion of Iran’s oil exports, risk becoming symbolic victories at disproportionate cost.
The comparison to Iwo Jima is not misplaced: a tactical gain unlikely to alter the strategic reality. Much of Iran’s missile infrastructure remains embedded and protected, beyond the reach of conventional assault.
Recent Trump statements suggesting that U.S. objectives have largely been met already signal a search for an exit. Yet an off-ramp may not be readily available. Iran’s advantage lies in time. By sustaining pressure, economic as much as military, it can compel concessions without decisive confrontation.
There was another path.
Rather than precipitating war, a strategy of containment through sanctions and patience might have allowed the regime to atrophy under the weight of its own contradictions. Iran faces converging crises: acute water scarcity, environmental degradation, declining agricultural productivity, economic duress, and deep internal dissent. A large portion of its population—diverse, young, and increasingly disillusioned—has already demonstrated a willingness to demand change at great personal risk.
That internal pressure, not external force, may have proven the more decisive agent of transformation.
Painting: John Trumbull. George Washington resigns as Commander-in-Chief, Continental Army.
I grew up in an America that celebrated George Washington’s February 22 birthday as a national holiday, signed into law by President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1879 as a federal workers’ holiday, then extended nationally in 1885.
Things changed in 1968 when Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, providing longer weekends and consolidating observances. Washington’s Birthday was reassigned to the third Monday in February, still legally designated as his birthday, though some congressional members proposed including Lincoln’s February 12 birthday under the broader aegis of Presidents’ Day.
That broader title caught on. Retailers and state governments increasingly adopted “Presidents’ Day.” Like so many holidays, it became a corporate sales opportunity.
Accordingly, the first item in my email this morning was a Presidents’ Day furniture sale—the first of what will no doubt be a barrage as the third Monday approaches.
Historian Jonathan Horn finds it absurd that we no longer distinctly celebrate Washington’s Birthday, given that it was observed in the young nation even before the framers of the Constitution met in 1787 (“Just Call It Washington’s Birthday,” Free Press, Feb. 11, 2026).
We owe much to this exemplary leader. Ken Burns credits Washington as “the glue that held it all together” in his PBS documentary TheAmericanRevolution. Facing superior, disciplined British forces, Washington understood that victory would require patience: knowing when to retreat, striking unexpectedly, and prolonging the war.
After defeats in New York, expiring enlistments, and desertions, matters reached their nadir during the winter encampment at Valley Forge outside British-occupied Philadelphia in 1777. Starvation loomed. Smallpox ravaged the ranks. Soldiers were unpaid, underfed, and poorly clothed.
With sagacity, Washington enlisted the Prussian officer Baron von Steuben, who molded the army into a disciplined fighting force. Recruits followed in greater numbers.
After General Gates’ victory at Saratoga, Washington was able to engage French support, working through liaison with the Marquis de Lafayette.
The decisive blow came when French naval forces blocked Cornwallis’s escape at Yorktown. Washington had deceived Cornwallis into believing New York was his objective while covertly moving his troops south. The British capitulated, leading ultimately to peace in 1783.
Washington had endured criticism without vindictiveness, even surviving a mutiny threat by disgruntled, unpaid officers.
For Burns, Washington’s greatest moment was not Yorktown or Trenton, but his resignation of his commission in Annapolis in 1783. As Burns tells it, he “knew how to defer to Congress, knew how to inspire ordinary people in the dead of night, knew how to pick subordinate talent—just had a kind of presence to him that, without him, we don’t have a country” (Chadwick Moore, New York Post, Nov. 11, 2025).
He did something similar in refusing a third presidential term. His 1796 Farewell Address remains prescient in its warnings against partisanship, permanent foreign alliances, sectionalism, and constitutional usurpation: “Let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.”
Yet Washington has come under fierce attack, criticized for slave holding and judged by contemporary moral standards. Some view him primarily as a symbol of racial oppression and seek removal of his name and likeness from public spaces.
In the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing in 2020 and the ensuing unrest, efforts accelerated to eliminate reminders of racial injustice, including monuments to Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson. Streets, buildings, and schools were renamed; statues toppled or defaced.
In Portland in 2020, protesters toppled and defaced a statue of Washington in a public park.
At the University of Washington, protesters called for removal of his statue.
In 2020, a statue of Washington at George Washington University was beheaded.
In 2021, the San Francisco Board of Education voted to rename a school honoring Washington, later reversing course after public scrutiny.
A Washington, D.C. working group, commissioned amid racial justice protests, recommended reviewing public names and monuments, suggesting federal sites be reconsidered for contextualization or renaming.
While some of this fury can be understood as anger over longstanding injustice, historian Howard Zinn argues in A People’s History of the United States that Washington’s mythic stature obscures his slaveholding and his violent campaigns against Indigenous peoples. Jill Lepore, in These Truths, likewise underscores the inseparability of his leadership from slavery.
It is painful to read, but much rings true.
Burns recounts Washington’s 1779 campaign against the Iroquois, ordering the destruction of settlements in retaliation for their alliance with the British: “Lay waste all the settlements around… that the country may not be merely overrun, but destroyed.” Towns and crops were burned. Many perished in the ensuing winter from famine and disease.
America was founded on a compromise that would lead to civil war and immense loss of life. Our history is marked by both courage and cruelty, liberty and bondage. We diminish ourselves if we pretend otherwise.
But we also diminish ourselves if we forget the magnitude of what was achieved: a fragile republic wrested from empire, sustained not by perfection but by discipline, restraint, and the voluntary surrender of power.
We are a nation still struggling to reconcile our ideals with our conduct. The work of ordered liberty, of constitutional self-government, of moral reckoning without erasure, remains unfinished.
The Revolution continues—not in the toppling of statues or canceling history, but by whether we can tell the truth about our past without losing the capacity to honor it.
Brimmings: up from the well 