https://provincetownindependent.org/declarations-of-independence/
The 250th
George Washington’s Wisdom
By Stephen Kinzer July 2, 2026
Sometime back in the last century, a portrait of George Washington hung in my sixth-grade classroom at Truro Central School. Being rebellious and skeptical by nature, even at such a tender age, I developed a quiet dislike for that disembodied deity. He seemed to me the way most old people seem to most kids: a far-off figure disconnected from the modern world and therefore with nothing to teach us.
That resistance began to dissolve as I learned more about Washington through studying Colonial American history in college. I came to realize that he truly was the indispensable man in the founding of the United States. He was not on the same intellectual level of his most brilliant contemporaries, but he had leadership qualities that made him unique. It is right that he be honored — not just for being first but also for being wise.
Washington seems more than the right leader for the United States of 250 years ago. He is also the leader we need today. If we had followed his advice — or if we could now find a way to return to his principles — the world would be a more peaceful place, and the United States might still rest comfortably in its role as a beacon of hope for all humanity.
Speaking to posterity in his 1796 farewell address, Washington asserted that the United States could remain a peaceful nation only by avoiding the traps that had brought down other proud states. It is poignant to read today what he warned us against two centuries ago: “permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world”; “frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests”; “overgrown military establishments, which under any form of government are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty”; “the mischiefs of foreign intrigue”; “love of power and proneness to abuse it”; “excessive partiality for one nation and excessive dislike of another”; “the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists”; “projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives.”
Washington sensed that his warnings would go unheard. “I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I would wish,” he lamented at the end of his speech. He was right. We have rejected Washington’s counsel. The result has been war and upheaval abroad coupled with grievous injustice at home.
If Americans want to find a new way of dealing with each other and the world, we need only return to the old way. We should follow the advice Washington left us. It is late for the United States to recognize the value of our patriarch’s vision and pursue it — but not too late.
Journalist and author Stephen Kinzer lives in Truro and Boston and is a senior fellow at Brown University’s Watson School. His new book, Boiling Point: How America Brought War to Ukraine, will be published in November.