Washington's Farewell Address Translated into Everyday Speech

Posted byRandall 333 Comments on Washington's Farewell Address Translated into Everyday Speech

I’ve often heard that Washington’s ‘Farewell Address’ — the speech he sent out (in written form) to a bunch of papers at the end of his second term — is important. Apparently he lays down a lot of good ideas for America. But the common style of writing and vocabulary has changed since then. Maybe people have gotten dumber, too. Either way, the result is that it’s kind of a pain to read sometimes. Particularly tricky are the odd compound sentence structures, where it’s hard to keep track of what the subject is.

Having never read the whole thing, I thought it would be interesting to go through and try to transcribe it into some sort of casual modern speech. I wouldn’t try to recreate the prose and would probably miss out on subtleties and shades of meaning (and no doubt occasionally miss the point completely), but at least I’d get the idea of what he was talking about.

So I pulled up a copy off Wikisource and started reading and typing. Here’s the result:

A Bastardization of George Washington’s Farewell Address

Sup.

Elections are coming up, and it’s time to figure out who we wanna give the keys to. I figure it might clear things up if I take a sec to explain why I’m not running.

Now, I care about the future, don’t get me wrong, and thanks for your trust so far. I just think me quitting is a good idea on all counts.

I’ve been president twice now, and I didn’t want to do it either time. I tried to quit the first time, but the country was in trouble and every single person around me begged me to stay on.

I’m glad to say we’re pretty much in the clear now and I can get out of here without getting screamed at or letting things fall apart completely.

I told you when I started what I thought of the job. All I’m gonna say is that I did my best to set up the government right, but the more I do this the more I realize how dumb I am, and so maybe it’s okay if I let someone else take over.

Before I go I’ve gotta thank y’all, for the awards and honors and stuff but more importantly for your supporting my projects to try to make everything right, even if they didn’t always turn out quite as well as I hoped. Remember, it’s hard to tell how things will turn out when people get all fired up, so thanks for sticking by me even when everything was going to hell. Y’all get the credit for anything good that came out of it, and by God you’d better keep taking good care of the Constitution and the lives of the folks who live here. As long as you do, we’ll be a pretty kickass country and the other guys will start noticing us.

I should shut up, but I care about you guys, so there’s some more stuff to cover. I’ve been doing some thinking and I’ve got a few things to say. You know I ain’t biased ’cause all I want is to leave, so you might wanna listen up.

Now, you all love freedom enough that no one thing here is too important.

You’re all happy that the government’s so together and unified on everything (and you should be — it’s why everything’s so good), but it ain’t always gonna be this way. All sorts of folks from both here and elsewhere are gonna try to divide it, make you lose faith in it, so please don’t sell this whole America thing short. Make it your top priority and don’t ever get in a mindset where you can let ANYTHING divide you.

You’ve gotta be Americans before all else. You’re for the most part the same religion and culture, and you’ve got the same goals, and you’ve only got what you do because you all worked together.

But even though this sounds good, when it comes to crunch time it’s easy to forget that in favor of stuff that seems more immediately important than sticking together.

The North and the South, as equals, help each other. The South gets machines and junk from the North, the North gets crops from the South. Also, the South’s got some nice boats which go out and fetch stuff we need from time to time. You’ve got a similar situation with the East and the West. The East supplies the West with what it needs, and the West gets a market for its crap as well as — once we get a navy in gear — protection on the Atlantic side. There’s really no way they could safely do what they’re doing without the folks to the East.

So, we all need each other and we’re all stronger when we’re together. Being a family also means we can get along a little better, unlike certain countries I might name who aren’t so well unified. This makes us stronger and protects our freedom, and if you wanna keep protecting it you’d better get along.

It should be obvious here that we should all try to keep ourselves together. Sure, it’s a big country, and we’re not sure if we can keep it all together, but what the hell? Let’s give it a shot and find out. It’d be stupid to call it off because we’re not sure if it’ll work. Since it’s obvious how much we have to gain from keeping ourselves together, we can safely say that anyone who tries to divide us, anywhere, hates America.

Let’s think about where those splits might come from. The big one is geography. North and South, Atlantic and West, people are gonna try to emphasize the differences. They’re gonna lie about what the other side wants, and they’ll try to make you hate each other when you should all be brothers. You saw just a bit ago how some folks were trying to stir up suspicion out West that we were trying to pull one over on them with the whole Mississippi thing, but you saw how thanks to Congress dealing with Spain and England they got everything they wanted in the end. So maybe they won’t be so quick to talk about jumping ship next time.

Government’s important, and it’s not always easy to stay together. You’ve figured this out, and that’s why you ditched the last idea and came up with this Constitution. We went over it all carefully, big and small, and it’s definitely something we can trust (we can even amend it if necessary!). Give it some credit, and if you disagree, change it — don’t just disobey. Otherwise it just screws things up.

Getting in the way of the law for the sake of power plays similarly screws things up. Playing that game creates groups just looking out for themselves, turning crazy splinter groups into a powerful force. Let this get too bad and you’ll probably have the country tossed back and forth wildly as the various parties with their pet issues fight for power, rather than nice, consensual, unified government.

Parties are probably gonna look like they’re helping with one popular issue or another, so you’re gonna want support them, but I bet the guys in charge of them will just turn out to be power-hungry assholes who want to run everything.

To keep things going nicely, quit fighting with the government and be careful with letting folk amend the Constitution to weaken it. Just, in general, give it all time and see how it works out before being quick to judge. It’s a big country and we can’t keep everyone safe without a little centralization.

I just said that parties are no good, particularly regional ones. But lemme go a step further and say ALL parties are a bad idea.

Unfortunately, it’s pretty much human nature to gather into little factions like this. It’s worst in the freeest countries, and they suffer because of it.

Control goes back and forth between one party and another, and they just get more and more pissed, and we’ve seen that get really bad in the past. But it also leads to terrible, controlling government and general suckage. This gets the people more angry, they get behind one party leader or another, and that guy just takes that support and does whatever he wants, screwing up the country.

I’m not talking about anyone in particular here, but this isn’t necessarially too far off, and it’s always gonna be a threat, so keep an eye out.

This division distracts us, enfeebles the government, it gets everyone riled up with jealousy and false alarms, it pits us against each other, and eventually creates riots and stuff. It also opens the door to other countries getting a hand in our system, since they can reach in through the party structure, and then we just become their puppets.

Now, there’s the idea that the parties are important to defend freedom and put the government in its place. That might even be true sometimes; when you’ve got a real Nazi in charge, you can afford to rally behind a party, but you shouldn’t like it, and you should dump it ASAP. And there’s always gonna be a feeling of opposition to whatever the government is, so be sure you know what you’re doing before getting all partisan, and be very careful to know when to drop it so you don’t just make the problem worse.

Also, make very sure that you keep all your politicians in their place. There’s this tendency to let all the power shift into one office, which inevitably creates tyranny (just look at human nature and how much we love power). If you just divide up the power, and get everyone to watch everyone else, we’ve seen both in the past and right here at home that things will work out pretty well. And if you think the powers aren’t laid out right, just go ahead and amend the Constitution. But be careful, because that’s an easy way to destroy everything. Make sure you’re not switching to something that, no matter how good it is for now, sucks in the long term.

Now, religion and morality are vital here, and it’s silly to say that patriotism could ever be more important than those. Politicians need to be pious and respectful folk; it would take forever to list all the ways that being a good politician is tied to being moral and religious. All you need to do is ask — without religion, how can we trust anyone who swears an oath? And be awfully careful before suggesting that we can be moral without religion. There’s a lot of philosophical junk out there, but the bottom line is we can’t possibly suggest that we can keep our morals as a country without religion.

So, virtue is the root of Government. So anyone who screws with the basis of the government is obviously a bad guy.

Make education of everyone a high priority, because the government will only be as smart as the average people are.

Public credit’s important too. Don’t run up debts during peacetime so you can afford to draw on them when there’s a problem — and then pay them back ASAP. This is the job of the politicians, but the people need to keep them in line. And remember, to pay debts you need cash, and you have to get the cash from somewhere, and there’s no way to do that which people will like. It’s a tough issue with no easy answer, so try to have a good attitude and pay up when necessary.

Try to stay at peace with everyone. Religion and basic decency both say to do this, so it should be a no-brainer. It might even turn out that God arranged it so if we’re nice to everyone, we’re better off in the end. Wouldn’t that be sweet? It sucks, though, that we tend to be jerks sometimes.

It’ll help a lot if you can avoid permanent rivalries and permanent alliances. Just try to get along with everyone when you can. Otherwise, you’re a slave to your policy, which may take you somewhere bad when the situation changes. Constantly being enemies with a particular country makes you stupid and reactive, and can even lead you to war when you really don’t need to. The government gets all involved in this, and one way or another it turns out badly. Permanent alliances are bad too, because they makes you give stuff up when you shouldn’t, cause jealousy, and divide loyalties of your own citizens, often with pretty bad results.

The idea of this kind of alliance should scare any real American because it lets foreign countries meddle with us. And remember, if a weak little nation (us) gets too attached to a big strong nation (anyone else) you know we’ll be stuck in that arrangement forever.

Now, foreign meddling is one of the worst threats around, and you should be constantly paranoid about it. But be careful to be fair and sensible about it, otherwise you’ll get so focused on one country or another that you slip into alliances with other countries. And then, like I said, you turn into tools.

The most important thing about commercial trade is to avoid getting politically tangled. We’ve obviously gotta keep the promises we’ve made, but in the future let’s try not to make new ones.

Europe has a whole lot of issues that don’t mean a thing to us. So they’re gonna be fighting, and we need to make sure not to get involved with the folks on either side. We might make some nasty enemies we don’t need to.

Since we’re out here across the Atlantic, we get to do our own thing. And if we just keep it together for a little while, we might be strong enough to stand up for ourselves. And if we’re tough enough, other countries won’t want to start anything, so the choice of whether to go to war or keep the peace will be up to us.

And why give up this great situation? Why give up our country just so we can live in someone else’s? Seriously — why get involved in Europe’s squabbles?

So, we’ve gotta avoid permanent alliances. We can’t break the promises we’ve already made — the government has to be honest just like anyone — but we don’t need to make more and we don’t need to actively make the current ones longer.

(Now, as long as we’re fighting a defensive war, alliances are okay in emergencies.)

In the same way that we should be politically friendly and stay on good and fair terms with everyone, we should be fair and open financially too. Just let everything go as it will without being biased. Let natural trade routes open up, and don’t try to mess around with the whole thing one way or another. Just keep and enforce the laws on trade and traders, and keep them flexible enough to change as the situation changes — always keeping an eye out for those foreign meddling. Never get used to paying one country or another, and never get used to expecting them to pay you.

I like you all. We’re friends. I’m not gonna hope that you’ll actually remember all this for long, but I can hope that every now and then people will look back on what I said and use it to calm down a crazy political party, remind us not to get tied up with other countries, or to try to expose phoney patriots. That’s the only payment I need — the hope that in return for my looking after you, you’ll look after yourselves.

You can look at my record. In my years in charge I’ve done my best to follow all the ideas laid out in this message.

Oh, and about the war still going on in Europe right now — check out what I said on 4/22/1793. It’s the outline of my principles on the subject, which I have followed as closely as I possibly could.

I gave it a lot of thought, decided that we could stay neutral, and then took reasonable steps to make sure that’s what happened.

You know, if you just look at basic common decency it should be pretty obvious what a good idea neutrality is.

As to the reasons it’s a good idea, you can probably come up with plenty on your own. For me, the main thing has been that we’re a pretty new country, just trying to get settled, and we don’t wanna interrupt that with war right away.

Now, I can’t think of anything I knowingly screwed up over the last eight years. But I’m sure I’ve made mistakes, and I pray that God helps to repair any harm they caused. And I hope that you’re understanding about them. I’ve spent 45 years working really hard for this country, and I hope that you won’t be too hard on my incompetences once I’m gone.

Speaking of being gone, I am really looking forward to this retirement. And I’m especially looking forward to retiring to live in a peaceful, free country of good laws under a good government — a government which is a good reward for our shared hardship, work, and love.

Wow. That was fun, depressing, inspiring, and a little bit spooky.

333 replies on “Washington's Farewell Address Translated into Everyday Speech”

  1. Hey there. My name’s David Schneider. I live in New York City and I’m in the process of creating a new online magazine of arts and ideas for the 21st century to be called BLOOM [and the Boy Bedlam Review]. I would very much like to feature this in it. We plan to have a soft launch up at the end of this month. Please contact me at dedalus99@earthlink.net. I look forward to hearing from you.

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  2. Pingback: Washington’s farewell address « The Pinetar Rag
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  4. That was…beautiful. I wish I’d thought of it.

    It’s not just that the elaborate language of the 19th C is a problem for the modern ear — it’s also that the language of the Founders has been used and abused for so long that we have emotional responses to words out of keeping with their meaning. We hear “liberty” or “freedom” or “the people” and think, “oh, crap. What’s this guy selling?”

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  6. This was really interesting.

    Because of some small quirk in my upbringing, somehow, I haven’t had that many problems reading either modern or antiquated political rambles. I’m also being forced to write a term paper about political parties, so… dumdedum… I enjoyed what Common Sense I’ve read, as well as Ben Franklin’s speech about the ratification of the Constitution, (remember the Articles of Confederation? Not those ones.), and was fairly familiar with this…

    But that’s not to say that your translation was a bad idea – nor that I’m unusually talented or such like that. I really hope this encourages people to read the original (or originals, ideally); even though some stuff can be confusing, by and large, the meat of the matter is there, and I think that people have way too much of a tendency to glance at something and go: “No way!” – in any subject.

    To the die-hards out there: almost every version of Shakespeare I’ve seen come with footnotes, which are essentially “translated” phrases, off to the side or some such place. There’s no way we can realize that “Fut” was an oath. That’s ludicrous. To me, it’s equally ludicrous to expect all of us to retain the language from the 1700s and 1800s. Some might bemoan the lack of real classic teaching, though, in all its olden glory…

    but at least our literacy rates are higher now, right? As in, drastically so?

    Anyway, before I locate more tangents, thanks for doing this. Getting people thinking is always the first step. ^_^

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  8. Awesome! I have already forwarded the link to a bunch of teachers. Thank you for doing this.

    As far as doing another one, I agree that Paine’s Common Sense would be a good one. But to tie in with what you have done here, I suggest the following essay from the Federalist Papers: Concerning the Difficulties of the Convention in Devising a Proper Form of Government.

    I think this one is important because we hear a lot of stuff about what the Founders really were trying to do, or about how things are really supposed to work, and I don’t think one can talk about these opinions intelligently unless one understands how we got to the form of government we have today. Just my two cents.

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  10. That was awesome!

    You might call it a “vulgarization” since the Vulgate is the vernacular.

    It might be fun to do this kind of stuff in a two-column “parallel translation” format.

    I once ran through the “Star Spangled Banner” and tried to parse what is a very long run-on sentence in my mind, and I came away with a tear in my eye at the hard-won vision of beauty.

    Keep up the beauty and thank you for this translation.

    Love,
    -danny

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  11. That speech of Washington’s, about divisive factions, makes interesting reading in the light of what happened in the 1860’s. If such troubles were forseen, could they not have tried harder to unite the states from the start?

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  13. What bewilders me is all these people saying it is “almost spooky” how so much of Washington’s address applies today. How on earth is it spooky? The address is all about human nature; that the same troubles and concerns as they existed in 1800 would plague us today is not the least bit surprising. Anyone with a shred of introspection should be able to realise that.

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  14. Nice! I think yours might actually be better written than the original. Living in the eighteenth century only excuses so much rambling.

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  15. that was very nice indeed. like nearly everything on xkcd. now i’m no american, and i count myself among the many millions who remain ignorant of the us political system and its history, but this made sense. it clearly made sense then, it makes sense now. what is sad is that many of the original notions and positions are missing from the current world stage.
    thanks for your work, it rocks.

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  16. While I like the idea of “requiring” politicians to read this translated version of GW’s speech, I think what is better is to have them write their _own_ translations. As opposed to giving them reduced readings before they gain political office, why not test them to be sure they are capable of complex ideas? It would also attest to the diplomacy and accuracy of understanding a candidate possesses. That said, this really is a truly inspiring read. It gives me lots of good ideas for assignments to give to my students! 🙂

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  18. That dude totally just earned his place on the dollar bill, quarter, and dollar coin.

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  19. Pingback: President Washington’s Address… Updated

  20. We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness… find out about these men, and their beliefs. We are a rare breed, for the short time we have existed our heritage is rich. For example, to be an American you need only to choose. Try moving to Greece or China and becoming a Greek, or Chinese. Sure you can obtain citizenship, but only by blood could you ever be one. Americans respect Human dignity above all else, and have a right to a particular reverence and respect, simply because we are creatures of God. Translations are good, but get the context of the person who wrote it, you will read it in a brighter light. Let Word, and Truth, and Light be your Guide.

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  21. I’ve always been an eye-roller about ‘modern-English’ translations, and this humbled me a bit about it. I’ve never read the original, and this certainly made me want to, though if I’d happened on it before I’m sure I would’ve gone into skim mode immediately and missed the most interesting and prescient things about it.

    Warrior Poet: Big ups for your second post, I know how it goes.

    NumberThree: Sorry all these non-p/np’ers ruined your little special thing. “More common?” The solution for you should be easy: just go find a bl[o/a]g no one else is reading, cool guy. And then sit back, cross your arms, and try to be satisfied with how cool you are. Loser. I think this here, is the thread you’ll find you belong on.

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  22. I find it amazing that even back in the dumb days back then, Washington and others had the vision to make sure they wrote in that the government can f**k us when they want….
    We can’t go online and amend the constitution, or go to congress and do it ourselves, and if we tried other methods, such as the right to overthrow our corrupt government (especially this fkn moron in office now), then all that would happen is we’d be thrown in prison. I think the only fix to that is for the government to essentially be non-existant, and we should be voting for everything together, not some jack ass elected official.

    All Washington did is open the door for us to be screwed, although he also gave us the door itself, to his credit.

    And the talk of religion….religion simply holds back man from progressing…he should’ve mentioned the tooth fairy or santa while he was at it.

    As far as the translation, there were alot of parts that were unnecessary and most likely were not intended in the fashion it was put in…however, the person who translated this CLEARLY stated this is the case…so nobody should get onto him/her for that.

    The only amendment I’m interested in seeing is one added that gives us the right to immediately eliminate any goverment official at all when they are not serving our objectives as a country, which should be to progress ourselves, screw the rest of the world, let them kill each other….in fact, I believe Washington even said something along those lines.

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  23. Well done. You got me curious, so I just read through Washington’s original, which is a nice piece of writing. Your version does it justice, though it tends towards summarization. Can’t blame you for that, though–long rhetorical flair isn’t the way we do speeches these days, so a line-for-line “translation” would lack the modern touch.

    Bravo.

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  26. This was exceptionally well done, though I didn’t necessarily agree with a few words used, it’s most likely just a difference in vernacular. This, and you, xkcd, are awesome.

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  27. This was extremely well done. I have nothing but appreciation for your effort. Also, the use of religion in the speech holds for something different then than it does now.

    Hell, to quote Jefferson and Adams in their collected correspondence, summarized by myself, since I don’t have the original at hand, “Then it is agreed. In these last years, with all our study on the subject of religion, it can be summarized in four words. Be good and just.”

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  28. fascinating reading, and entertaining to boot. thanks randall! (awesome, awesome comics too, by the way.)

    as there are a few requests now for Common Sense, i thought i’d give a stab at the introduction. i was aiming for newspaper-columnist tone, rather than kickin’-back-with-my-homies. 🙂

    i actually kept several of Paine’s phrases, since i couldn’t find any more succinct way to put it. ironic, given the 18th century’s reputation for labyrinthine sentence construction…

    The following ideas may not win any popularity contests. When we accept something badly wrong as normal, it begins to look right; people will even rush to its defense simply for its familiarity. But eventually the dust settles. Time makes more converts than reason.

    Whenever there is a long and violent abuse of power, the oppressed will understandably question their leaders’ right to wield that power. The King of England has committed numerous abuses and claimed them as his right. So, separately, has Parliament. The two combined have put terrible pressure on the good people of this country, and so the people have a clear right of their own: to investigate their rulers’ pretensions, and if necessary to liberate themselves of both.

    In these pages, I have carefully avoided any compliments or censure of individuals. The wise and the worthy don’t need pamphlets to validate them; the imprudent and the antisocial will eliminate themselves regardless of what I write here.

    The cause of America is essentially the cause of humankind itself. The questions we face here, now and in the future, are universal. The destruction of a country with bombs and guns, the declaration of war on basic human rights, the annihilation of the defenders of liberty—these events are of urgent concern to all decent human beings, no matter their political leanings. Yours truly counts himself among them.

    P.S. The publication of this new edition was delayed, in case there was any attempt refute the original; but there have been none so far, and since the timeliness of such an attack is long past, I assume that none will.

    Who wrote this? you may ask. This is irrelevant—the point is the doctrine itself, not its author. It’s worth mentioning that the author has no party affiliation, and never accepts funds from any public or private interest; his only bias is a love of reason and principle.

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  29. I like it. There is one typo I found that you may want to fix. It reads, “Parties are probably gonna look like they’re helping with one popular issue or another, so you’re gonna want support them, but I bet the guys in charge of them will just turn out to be power-hungry assholes who want to run everything.” Other than that the thing was impeccable…

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  30. I think I may have spoken too soon. Here are four words that simple don’t exist in the English language:

    freeest
    necessarially
    phoney
    incompetences

    Please fix.

    By the way, I get all the “wannas” and “ain’ts” and “gonnas.” I get those and I think they are cool. I am talking about out-and-out typos in this thing.

    P.S. I am just trying to help you because I like this thing a lot and don’t want you to lose readers because of sloppy grammar…

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  31. Just wanted to say thanks for doing that. It made it a lot more accessible and it was definitely worth reading.

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  32. translation of Washington’s farewell speech/text. I thought it was interesting – and poignant.

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  33. Oh, for the love of god. Your cartoon regarding Youtube seems awfully prescient in the context of Robotkin and company. The internet is full of loud dumb people. And humorless! It reminds me of a meeting held by anarchists; So much bitching and kvetching that they never bother to actually get things done. All they can do is complain that something isn’t perfect or p.c. enough. Jeesh.

    Well, I thought your rendition of his speech was great. And there’s nothing wrong with simplifying a text or making something easier to understand. It’s only academics (and would-be academics) that prize obfuscation for its own sake.

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  34. (Disclaimer: I’ll admit, I skipped just about all of the comments.)

    Just wanted to say thanks for this. It was very interesting, and has motivated me to go and read the original text. Arcane language is easier to sift through if you have a decent grasp of what’s going on to begin with.

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  36. i once shot a man in reno and now i regret it because it must have been you, cause your blag hasn’t been updated for ages. oh noes!

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  38. I thought this was great. I’m not going to add my two cents into the linguistic discussion going on here (it’s been had for centuries, so there’s really no point), but I did want to add some historical context to the discussion based on some things people have said. Forgive me for not replying to people directly; it’s late and I don’t want to search through all these replies again. I thought it would be better just to supply a few key points.

    One, George Washington is, for the most part, not the one responsible for the convoluted, high-brow diction in the farewell address. The final outline was basically agreed upon by Washington and Hamilton, at which time Hamilton simply wrote out most of it. Washington himself was not brilliant in the academic sense, but he knew that Hamilton was and he trusted him to deliver something worthy of the presidential office. However it was very much Washington’s intention to keep the office of the president on a level above the common “rabble,” so to speak, so it was important to him that the speech sound very educated.

    Two, George Washington was also quite a religious man. There are a lot of things in this farewell address that allude to the French revolution (either going on at the time or having recently ended; can’t recall at the moment) and the Jeffersonian party’s support of the wholesale bloodshed that occurred over there. Jefferson was percieved as being atheistic and was the head of the Republican party, whereas Washington and Hamilton belonged to the Federalist persuasion. These two parties are utterly different from what we have today and there is no comparison. In very brief terms, the Federalists were in favor of a strong unified central government, while Jefferson and his crowd were constantly pushing for stronger state power and for the dissolution of most of the Federal government’s power (at this point in history we’re talking about a government structure made up of about 30 bureaucrats… if only they could see us now!) So in part the speech is a warning to those forces that were trying to tear the country apart.

    Someone mentioned that if Washington had seen this far ahead, couldn’t he have unified the government a little more and avoided civil war in the future? The answer is no. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, knew from the start of this country that the situation between the north and the south would eventually blow up over the issue of slavery (among other things). There was even a fairly strong abolitionist movement in the Northern states at this time. But for the sake of unifying the country in the face of the revolution, everyone made a conscious decision to just survive the current trial by putting the whole north vs. south issue aside. But everyone knew it wasn’t over. Lots of people were hoping that slavery would simply die out in the meantime, but most knew that wasn’t going to happen. So Washington’s goal was basically to leave a strong structure in tact so that when the crisis did hit, it wouldn’t destroy the country.

    Incidentally, I had to learn all of this stuff on my own through reading. Why is it that all we get while we’re in school is some sort of cruddy watered-down version of the events? The details and the reality are so much more interesting. I hated history until I graduated and started discovering that it’s actually really amazing. Thanks to xkcd for opening up this bit of American history.

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  40. DUDE

    THAT ROCKS!!!
    . NOW IF U COULD ONLY REWRITE HISTORY AND PUT SOMETHING IN THERE ABOUT GENECIDING THE GODLESS MUSLIMS. I’M TRYING TO GAIN SUPPORT FOR THE CAUSE BUT I’M NOT NEARLY AS CREDIBLE AS UNCLE GEORGE. IF ONLY HE KNEW AT THE TIME THAT THOSE MO’FO’S WERE SO DIRTY, HE CERTAINLY WOULD OF DECLARED THEIR DESTUCTION A PRIMO PRIORITY
    THANKS

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  42. Dear Haydee
    I did get the point. But the fact is we’re not a tiny nation trying to make it in a much larger world any more. Through the concepts of our founding fathers and by the grace of god we overcame the odds and became the predominant power. Now if we don’t want, or can’t handle the responsiblity of being the greatest world superpower then we should resururect the NAZI’s and let them handle all the world’s problems. I think we all know what Hittler would of done to the MUD PEOPLE had the 9/11 attacks happened in a victorious third reich. WE EARNED THE TITLE BELT, NOW WE MUST DEFEND IT. AND THE NUMBER ONE CONTENDER IS THE EVIL ISLAMIC PUKES. GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANT A BIG FAT NUKE. GENOCIDE THE MUSLIMS

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  44. Pingback: Gleeful Gecko » Blog Archive » George Washington’s Farewell Address In Today’s Speech

  45. Language
    ~~~~~~~~
    Anyone who thinks Washington is hard to read should try Beowulf in its original Old English. I gave up after 25 lines, and I was comparing with a translation (and just stuck to the translation).

    Of course the reasons for the sometimes incomprehensibility are different–the GW speech just takes some getting used to…whereas for Beowulf, I think my knowledge of German was as relevant to Old English as Modern English. (if you think of Shakespeare or even Chaucer when I write “Olde English”, think again)

    This speech in particular is more challenging to me than Chaucer, just because it is so rambling. I guess I have Hamilton to thank! And here I already mildly disliked the Federalists!

    Religion
    ~~~~~~~~
    http://www.answers.com/topic/george-washington-and-religion

    What’s on that page about religion sounds milder than Randall’s translation. But then they hadn’t seen nihilism or world war two in his day, so I don’t blame them. I think it’s become clear by now that having some sort of ethical foundation with many similarities is both good, and possible without religion.

    I’d consider that more important than mythology or which advanced extraterrestrial (by definition the creator of Earth is extraterrestrial, nobody go UFO on me! (“UFO” also being taken to mean more than what it abbreviates, most of the time)).

    But look at the last paragraph on this page here :http://www.antisectes.net/religion-defined.htm
    ‘Religion’ clearly did not mean the same thing as it now does. I reiterate what I already wrote.

    Misc
    ~~~~~~~
    And I’m not (eat that, “I ain’t” crowd!) surprised by people largely ignoring Washington’s words…see the comments about literacy, etc. And while the politicians and elites have generally always been literate, they’re also those with the most to gain by ignoring Washington in favor of their own self-interest. So it goes.

    Brandon: I don’t think Washington opened the door for the government to screw us…in many ways he helped make it less efficient at screwing us (that being its natural tendency: screwing us) by supporting an experiment in internal checks and balances (I know they’ve begun to fail since then, sucks).

    The nice thing about this ‘translation’ was that I could give it a quick read. Getting into the original is tougher–I still have almost no interest. Kudos.

    -B-

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  46. outfckin standing
    I must say that was great.
    I also must say that as much as i hate to admit it general genocide has a point. Let’s kill all them muslims. They’re all crazier than brittany spears on acid. So let’s rally the troops and genocide the muslim morons that have killed too many of my brothers in arms!!! GENOCIDE THE MUSLIMS.that is my new battle cry.

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  48. Superb. I wish I’d seen it in time to send it to my son before his history exam today.

    I have also enjoyed reading the comments so far. It occurs to me that people who are debating the notion of “translating” the original text might be interested in Douglas Hofstadter’s “Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language”, which has a lot of truly fascinating discussion about the whole idea of translation, including translation “between frames of reference — languages, cultures, modes of expression, or indeed between one person’s thoughts and another” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Ton_beau_de_Marot).

    I can see both points of view, in that the translation can’t help losing something from the original, but on balance I think the enormous value of the ideas more than makes up for some loss of the emotional context and style of the speech. Yes, the emotional context and style do matter a great deal, in terms of understanding the historical perspective, but it’s the *ideas* that still have the potential (call me a cockeyed optimist) to make a difference today — if only we could get more people today reading and thinking about the ideas.

    Many thanks for writing this. I hope it turns into required reading.

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  50. Your success is impressive. You have awakened interest and discussion in a critical area. May the waves continue to spread. It is always more difficult to create than to criticize, and your interpretation required considerable creative effort. Congratulations! Outstanding job.

    Thank you for your effort. Clearly it is appreciated.

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