George Washington's a Fascist Dictator - Didn't You Know?

Though I would like to treat this controversy over President Obama's school address with a light touch, these cries of "socialist!" and "fascist!" brought on, most forcefully, by the debate over health care, brought to mind for me the accusations of "monarchism" directed toward George Washington during his administration.

In both cases, the United States' citizenry saw itself as having recently defeated an “oppressive” political system it associated with foreign powers. The end of the Cold War gave the United States a sense that it had defeated the “tyranny” of Communism. After the Revolution, the American people saw themselves as having defeated the “tyranny” of having a European monarch directly dictate to its citizenry; it was what first defined the English-speaking settlers on this continent as “Americans,” not Englishmen.
 

Long before the end of the Cold War, the United States saw itself as a beacon of “liberty,” and of “democracy,” and was highly sensitive to imagined attempts to encroach on these qualities—though these attempts have sometimes been imaginary. But the fact that our citizenry is on the alert for invasions of its rights and way of life, whether its ire is misdirected or not, is, on the whole, a good thing.

There seems to be an anti-monarchist paranoia abroad in the land once more. Once more it is feared that the head of state is setting himself up as a dictator.

Was George Washington setting himself up as a monarch? Well, no. He did not really want even to be President, but took the post out of a sense of “duty.” He recorded having a sense of dread closing in on him in his carriage ride to the first U.S. capitol in New York in 1789. When he decided to give up the Presidency at the end of two terms and not run for a third term, he did so in part because he did not want the office of the President to turn into anything resembling a king. In fact, he was relieved to give up the position of chief executive and retire to Mount Vernon once more.

That said, I am on the verge of thinking that this radical “down with government” populist uprising is a good thing. I am having trouble imagining anything of the kind happening under Bush. So what if it’s a little hysterical—so what if it’s largely based on lies, distortions, fabrications, and misapprehensions? So what it includes scurrilous, unfounded accusations about the political opposition, and the people running the federal government? So did the controversy between the Democratic-Republicans and the Federalists during Washington’s tenure as President in the 1790s.

Democracy is a good thing, on the whole, and so what if our citizenry is a little cracked, a little misinformed? The costs of such ignorance and zealotry are real—they are real for the uninsured, for those crippled by health care costs in addition to being sick, they are real for the financial health of the country—but perhaps the costs of not living in a lively, rambunctious, irascible democracy would be greater.