Political Science - History, U.S. Politics & Government - 1607 - 1811, Presidents of the United States - Biography, American Revolution - Politics & Government, U.S. Politics & Government - 2000-Present, Liberalism & Conservatism, U.S. Politics & Governme

Saving General Washington

Name: Saving General Washington
Author: J. R. Norton
ISBN: 9781585424863

by J. R. Norton

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Overview

An edgy work of political journalism that debunks conservative contentions tying the right-wing political agenda to the visionary ideas of America's founders, while reclaiming the progressive legacy of the Founding Fathers.

Modern Republicans have made a smart bet. They're wagering that Americans have gotten so far from their own history that a timely grab could put a "Founding Fathers" stamp of approval on the party that brought us policies as fundamentally un-American as the PATRIOT Act, as well as the war in Iraq.

But the more you learn about the Founding Fathers, the more broad and powerful parallels emerge between their practical—and revolutionary-political ideas and the modern progressive movement. The Founders loved reason and strenuous debate, not the quashing of dissent. They believed in checks and balances, and certainly not an imperial presidency. There were no "deferments" from the Colonial army. There were no "Schooner Ship Vets" to bail them out by making George Washington look like a deceptive medal hound.

With wryness and a touch of understated outrage, J. R. Norton reintroduces a generation (or two) to their Founders, men who were more dangerous and exciting than Che Guevara, Joe Strummer, and 50 Cent combined. We had toughies killed in politically motivated gunfights (Hamilton) and presidents who were also frontline heroes of war (Washington). Nowadays, the politicians who claim fraternity with these men are pampered oil heirs appointed to the presidency by the Supreme Court, leaders who spend "working weekends" on their ranches in the midst of a war-not to mention a massive natural disaster. We have draft-dodgers in the House and adulterers in the Senate and most want to alter the Constitution to take rights away from their own citizens (via the Federal Marriage Amendment). Saving General Washington sets our current political leaders in stark relief against the men who designed this "last best hope of earth," showing us just how far we've departed from the brilliant ideas and core values America was built on—and inspiring us to take up the mantle of the Founders again.

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Editorials

Kirkus Reviews

"Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder."Thus spoke Thomas Paine, a Founding Uncle if not a Founding Father, whose words are scarcely ever evoked these days. By The Al Franken Show staffer Norton's judicious account, that's because Paine is just too darned revolutionary; certainly nothing he said gives aid and comfort to the neocons who have taken the name of the founders in vain in order to justify their imperialist adventures around the globe. Thus, when Dick Cheney wanted to plead for legitimacy in invading Iraq, he summoned up the cozy image of spreading democracy; when he wanted to legitimate the constitution there, he likened the process to the long one of making our own, concluding, "So this is a tough, difficult thing we're trying to do." Maybe so, says Norton, but the analogy is wholly false: it just sounds good to quote or mention the founders "when you're defending a disastrous war," just as it's an expedient thing to liken, say, contras and mujahedeen to our own revolutionaries. (Never the insurgents, though: they're Saddamists and terrorists, not patriots.) Norton is wry and sometimes a tad smartass, but his points are well taken. As John Dean remarked, and as Norton documents in case after case, "the Bush administration has made the Nixon administration look as clean and open as a Quaker picnic." It's thus a great irony, Norton argues, that the Bushies so intently strip away civil liberties even as they profess to be legitimate heirs to the likes of Adams, Washington and Jefferson. In the matter of nepotism alone, Norton deftly shows, they don't even approach operating in the samemoral universe. More Jon Stewart's America than Alistair Cooke's, but with a fierce and often funny point. Just the thing for the midterm elections.