Stephen Walt in Foreign Policy wrote this year in 2010, “A year ago, I suggested that everyone celebrate the 4th of July by re-reading the Declaration of Independence, and reflect on how the United States has evolved since 1776. In an era of encroaching executive power, I wondered, are we the heirs of the Founding Fathers, or the descendants of King George III?
This year, I recommend you spend a few minutes reading George Washington's Farewell Address, originally published in September 1796. Read the whole thing. Our first president has many wise things to tell us today, but none is more telling than his trenchant advice on the conduct of foreign policy.”
George Washington – “Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it -- It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that, in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it?...
In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur.
Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim.
So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.
As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils. Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.
Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it.
Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.”
It is of interest that the 13 Colonial Colonies of Great Britain gained their independence in America from the tyranny of the British King George III of “Tribe of Ephraim in England” by signing their “Declaration of Independence” on July 4, 1776. They created on the planetary landscape the official Nation as the 13th colony of the Tribe of Manasseh of the Federation of Israelite Nations who earlier settled in Northern Gaul (Europe) between the 3rd c. BCE and the 4th c. CE.
By carefully reading the Farewell address of President George Washington, we realize that he was evoking the principles of Torah given to the ancient Children of Israel on the mount called Sinai to be courteous and kind but stand aloof of the pagan nations of the world. They were to neither become a “passionately attached” nor indulge in “habitual hatred” towards any other nation. America was to be a “chosen covenanted nation” along with all their other tribal brothers residing now with the Israelite Nation Kingdoms of Northern Europe (ancient Gaul).
And so we ask today, like Stephen M. Walts, “Are we the heirs of America’s Founding Fathers, or the descendants of King George III?” We also wonder, have we evolved into an imperialistic Nation of America, fed by ancient Greece’s fondness for democracy over allegiance to the G-d of Israel and Grecian Hellenism where the idealism that man was supreme over the supremacy of the Sovereignty of the Eternal One of Israel.
This leads us to ask a second question, “Are the foreign policies adventures of America today fed by “Oil for Peace” with our cousins of the House of Ishmael, leading America to seek to abandon our own Tribal brothers, the Jews of the House of Judah with America’s delusionary visions of Israeli “Land for Peace”? What America has forgotten, the land they are seeking to give to the Arab Palestinians are the covenanted homelands for American and European Israelites. When we seek to give the Palestinians these lands, we ask the G-d of Israel to abandon us!
Credits to Stephen M. Walt – “What to read this Fourth of July weekend” - July 2, 2010