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From the Founder…
As we begin this week, Monday has become thought of more and more to be “President’s Day.” However, it is yet another example of confusion within our nation and the desire of people to do whatever they want. Congress designated the third Monday of the month of February to be a federal holiday to remember George Washington’s birthday. Contemporary calendars will designate either. Yet, most calendars depict this third Monday as “President’s Day.” To make it more confusing, other calendars refer to this day as “Presidents’ Day” (Note the apostrophes). The punctuation is simply a reflection of the misunderstanding of the purpose of the day.
Originally, the day was established by Congress to honor the Father of the Country: George Washington. It became official in a time, different from today, when men in Congress were reluctant to single any one individual out to celebrate their birthday. They did it for George Washington. It is essentially so since not all presidents are created equal. Today, it is considered Presidents’ Day as a simple way of watering down respect for the truly great that had stood out in our nation’s history, as some were just politicians: perhaps political hacks, puppets performing the role their Party had set for them. There are many that fit this description, especially the one residing in the White House presently.
Great leaders do not often make it to the pinnacles of power since they are not trusted by the power brokers or uber wealthy donor class. The people have tended to prefer pre-packaged picks of the propaganda-pounding media as opposed to real leaders. Such leaders may have failed the cut: Washington as he was often ‘too polite’ or soft spoken - Lincoln ‘too divisive.’
Essentially, Presidents’ Day evolved, or ‘devolved,’ into a one-size fits all celebration. Long ago, businesses took it upon themselves to celebrate the holiday to increase their sales in economic downturns, or to bolster sales in “celebration campaigns.” States took it upon themselves to celebrate certain presidents to link the Party in power to former greatness, or to raise political awareness and promote candidates and donations for Party coffers. It was a deviation from the original purpose of gratefully celebrating the birthday of a president who did not believe in the political parties as a healthy trend for the future of America. And look at us now…
Nonetheless it is an election year, and it may be good to reflect on a genuine leader who was so willing to sacrifice so much to help give birth to a land where freedom could grow. Such serious reflection may serve as a way of measuring those others who are included in the lineup of those who held to the position of POTUs, or those who claim to be leaders today. It is fitting that the American citizens review again the reasons we have enjoyed freedom is because of those who were will to fight for it and to defend it. This generation, as Reagan warned, may be the first to have so much and yet do so little to preserve the freedoms they have been bequeathed by the ones who held a great deal more respect for Freedom than we do today. In light of this, it is not too much to wish George Washington a “Happy Birthday,” despite the confusion and corruption.
This edition of the Founder’s Focus is dedicated to George Washington, and especially it is dedicated to the foundation of Freedom that he helped to forge from a tyrannical government that had little regard for the citizens of his day. The first article is one I wrote about Washington’s birthday in 2017. Many Americans have not currently been taught more comprehensively or honestly about George Washington, and do not know this Founder – the Father of America. To help with providing a better understanding, the second message is from the man himself.
In Sunday’s LightWing Messages, I offered an article which quoted some from Washington’s First Inaugural Address. Our second message is a transcript of the complete address. It is not something that a majority of people would “bother with” today, unless dealing more specifically with Colonial American history. It is recommended to our readers to bother with it. It illuminates Washington's love for God and Country and Freedom.
As mentioned in the last “Founder’s Focus,”For many patriots, there are many standing unanswered questions that hover like dark clouds over the entire system of electing ‘leaders’ for our states and for our nation. It is a very seminal election year that is not just some “business as usual” type of election. Freedom itself is on the line in 2024. Watching, or observing procedures of conducting elections is critical to shining the light of day upon inept, corrupt, or illegal efforts in handling and processing of ballots. Additional concerns regard the legal system and recently have shed much greater light on the corruption in that arena. Yet, while breakdown of the judicial system is quite alarming, all of this indicates that citizens are now more aware of what they did not know before. While the spotlight shines, good citizens must begin to go to work.
As mentioned in the last Founder’s Focus: “Apathy and disinterest stem from self-absorption and a lack of genuine concern for the human family.” ‘It’s not my concern’ is an excuse for doing little or nothing at all to solve the problems. Usually, the adage that all it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing is true! And, it honestly does not matter who said it because truth is truth. However, Freedom is in American citizen’s DNA, and when freedoms are truly threatened, as they are being threatened now, it is the Freedom of all Americans that is being threatened.
“Being awake to the threats, ones that are visible as well as ones that remain unseen, is the first step. Continued awareness is a good second step. Communication with others of the threats is the critical stage and one in which diversion or outright suppression of expression is a warning of the erosion of one of our precious First Amendment rights. But, when one considers that the most important expression one can contribute to a Free Republic is their vote, if one’s voice of support or disfavor is negated election after election, it is a dangerous sign that our voices are being trampled. So, when freedom of speech is stifled or curtailed, and when one’s voice at the ballot box is eliminated, one must wonder: How much further will the attacks upon our freedoms be tolerated?” As mentioned several times before: “it is important for the remnant to work together to retain the Republic. United “We the People” will stand; artificial, inconsequential divisions will undo us. Let us defend Freedom!”
George Washington’s Birthday or President’s Day?
By Dennis Jamison 2/20/2017
Calendars are useful tools. However, they sometimes create more confusion than clarification over dates designated as holidays. Holidays are good, but if one does not really know what the celebration is about, can such a special day be truly appreciated?
Such confusion surrounds the present day remembrance of George Washington’s Birthday. The third Monday of February has legally been designated by the United States’ Congress as a day to remember the birthday of George Washington and some calendars will accurately designate it so. However, other calendars depict the third Monday in February as “President’s Day” and others reference the day as “Presidents’ Day.” To make it even more confusing, there are yet other calendars that refer to this day as “Presidents Day!”
It should not be that difficult to sort out the simple recognition of George Washington’s Birthday.
So, what’s the big deal? Well, for one thing, English punctuation is important and it sends messages to those able to decipher the subtle distinctions. If U.S. citizens are celebrating “Presidents Day,” they are in fact celebrating or honoring all the other presidents of the United States along with good old George Washington. This is because without any apostrophe, the “s” at the end of the word presidents designates a plural reality. This means to the careful reader that the holiday is a celebration of all forty plus former presidents and the current occupant of the White House.
Even with an apostrophe at the end of the word presidents(‘), which designates possession as well as plurality, the word implies that at least more than one president is being honored; and in all likelihood, it is perhaps all of the presidents who are fully entitled to be honored on this day. Most people seem to accept that it is primarily a federal holiday to honor the two most famous presidents born in the month of February: Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. It would seem to be a bit of a stretch to include the likes of Millard Fillmore, Chester A. Arthur, or Grover Cleveland in such a holiday.
On the other hand, regarding the punctuation, if the illusive apostrophe is placed between before the final “s” in presidents (like so: President’s) it designates individual ownership that would mean the day is for one and only one of the U.S. presidents. This suggests that the day is meant to honor the Father of the Country. This recognition may bring one back full circle to the original intent of the holiday, which was to maintain the holiday that honored the very first president.
So, the question is simply this: Why not call the holiday George Washington’s Birthday? Yes, indeed, it may be too simple to call it what it is.
George Washington’s Birthday was celebrated publicly even while he was president. Years later, the holiday became an official federal holiday in 1885. On February 21st of that year, President Chester Arthur, in one of the last public ceremonies in which he participated before leaving office, dedicated the Washington Monument. Later in 1885, he signed a Congressional bill which expanded the earlier Congressional Act of 1879 creating a federal holiday for Washington’s Birthday for the government workers in the District of Columbia. The 1885 legislation essentially transformed Washington’s birthday into a legitimate federal holiday, giving holiday benefits to all federal employees. This holiday was the first federal holiday to honor an American citizen. It was originally celebrated on what was considered Washington’s actual birthday of February 22nd. However, George Washington was not really born on that day.
When Washington was born on Pope Creek’s Farm in Westmoreland County, Virginia, it was February 11, 1731! This can be blamed on another inaccurate calendar, the Julian Calendar, which was still used by the British Empire until 1752. Although the Gregorian Calendar was utilized by most of the Catholic world from the date of the papal bull of Pope Gregory XIII which was decreed on February 24, 1582, the British didn’t weren’t part of the Roman Catholic realm. Through the Calendar Act of 1750, the British finally adopted the Gregorian calendar, but it became confusing for all of the English subjects in the realm born after that year.
In 1752, good old George Washington’s birthday under the British Empire’s newly adopted Gregorian Calendar, became February 22, 1732. Not to be outdone, the U.S. Congress decided to add to the calendar confusion, and on January 1, 1971, the Uniform Monday Holiday Act took effect and transformed several traditional holidays celebrated throughout the year to Monday dates, This included the remembrance of Washington’s Birthday. So, contrary to popular perception, this legislation did not establish a “Presidents’ Day” to combine Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthday parties.
The Uniform Monday Holiday Act was debated by Congress and signed into law on June 28, 1968, and was simply designed to increase the quantity of three-day weekends for all federal employees. Although there had been an early draft of the Congressional calendar shell game that would have made Washington’s Birthday officially into “Presidents’ Day” (to honor both presidents – Lincoln and Washington), it did not make it through the preliminary committee and the original name was maintained as “Washington’s Birthday.”
The underlying reason for the name confusion is that the federal government began to tinker with it and messed up a perfectly good birthday celebration for George Washington. To compound the problem, the nation’s economy in the 1970’s began to tank. Private retailers which had learned by that time that Congress originally intended to change the name of Washington’s Birthday to Presidents/s’/’s Day, pivoted off of the more generic name to primarily stimulate business. They had done their marketing homework, and for some odd reason, the retailers discovered that generic “Presidents” sold more products than the Father of the Country.
A marketing endeavor and a local department store promotion generated into a national phenomenon – in today’s terminology – “it went viral!” At this time the designation of Mr. Washington’s birthday has unofficially been transformed into “Presidents/s’/’s Day,” with many Americans believing that the name of the legal federal holiday is essentially official. But this is not true. It is true that a number of state governments (at least a dozen) have passed legislation to rename the holiday observance as “Presidents’ Day or “Washington and Lincoln Day,” or other assorted variations along the same theme.
In reality, it ultimately depends upon where one lives (state governments truly determine the holiday where applicable) whether they actually celebrate “Presidents Day,” “Presidents’ Day,” or “President’s Day!” Some states officially celebrate both birthdays! Actually, neither Lincoln’s birthday (February 12th), nor Washington’s birthday will ever fall upon the third Monday of the month of February. That date can only occur between the 15th to the 21st of that month.
Interestingly, these dates fall between the birthdays of Lincoln and Washington but never on the exact dates. This guarantees that “Washington’s Birthday” as a federal holiday will always be a misnomer and allows for no true or official recognition of Mr. Lincoln’s birthday.
One wonders seriously, if the government can screw up a simple birthday celebration, how is it that the American citizens can trust them with much more important agenda items? In actuality, it is important to remember the nation’s history because if a nation forgets its great leaders and notable men or women of the past, that nation will lose its roots and foundation. Whether one celebrates Presidents Day or Washington’s Birthday or a combination of such days, it is important to remember the men and women who made America great!
President George Washington's First Inaugural Speech (1789)
Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives:
Among the vicissitudes incident to life no event could have filled me with greater anxieties than that of which the notification was transmitted by your order, and received on the 14th day of the present month. On the one hand, I was summoned by my Country, whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love, from a retreat which I had chosen with the fondest predilection, and, in my flattering hopes, with an immutable decision, as the asylum of my declining years--a retreat which was rendered every day more necessary as well as more dear to me by the addition of habit to inclination, and of frequent interruptions in my health to the gradual waste committed on it by time.
On the other hand, the magnitude and difficulty of the trust to which the voice of my country called me, being sufficient to awaken in the wisest and most experienced of her citizens a distrustful scrutiny into his qualifications, could not but overwhelm with despondence one who (inheriting inferior endowments from nature and unpracticed in the duties of civil administration) ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies. In this conflict of emotions all I dare aver is that it has been my faithful study to collect my duty from a just appreciation of every circumstance by which it might be affected.
All I dare hope is that if, in executing this task, I have been too much swayed by a grateful remembrance of former instances, or by an affectionate sensibility to this transcendent proof of the confidence of my fellow-citizens, and have thence too little consulted my incapacity as well as disinclination for the weighty and untried cares before me, my error will be palliated by the motives which mislead me, and its consequences be judged by my country with some share of the partiality in which they originated.
Such being the impressions under which I have, in obedience to the public summons, repaired to the present station, it would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge.
In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less than my own, nor those of my fellow- citizens at large less than either. No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency; and in the important revolution just accomplished in the system of their united government the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many distinct communities from which the event has resulted can not be compared with the means by which most governments have been established without some return of pious gratitude, along with an humble anticipation of the future blessings which the past seem to presage.
These reflections, arising out of the present crisis, have forced themselves too strongly on my mind to be suppressed. You will join with me, I trust, in thinking that there are none under the influence of which the proceedings of a new and free government can more auspiciously commence.
By the article establishing the executive department it is made the duty of the President "to recommend to your consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." The circumstances under which I now meet you will acquit me from entering into that subject further than to refer to the great constitutional charter under which you are assembled, and which, in defining your powers, designates the objects to which your attention is to be given.
It will be more consistent with those circumstances, and far more congenial with the feelings which actuate me, to substitute, in place of a recommendation of particular measures, the tribute that is due to the talents, the rectitude, and the patriotism which adorn the characters selected to devise and adopt them. In these honorable qualifications I behold the surest pledges that as on one side no local prejudices or attachments, no separate views nor party animosities, will misdirect the comprehensive and equal eye which ought to watch over this great assemblage of communities and interests, so, on another, that the foundation of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality, and the preeminence of free government be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its citizens and command the respect of the world.
I dwell on this prospect with every satisfaction which an ardent love for my country can inspire, since there is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness; between duty and advantage; between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity; since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained; and since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered, perhaps, as deeply, as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.
Besides the ordinary objects submitted to your care, it will remain with your judgment to decide how far an exercise of the occasional power delegated by the fifth article of the Constitution is rendered expedient at the present juncture by the nature of objections which have been urged against the system, or by the degree of inquietude which has given birth to them. Instead of undertaking particular recommendations on this subject, in which I could be guided by no lights derived from official opportunities, I shall again give way to my entire confidence in your discernment and pursuit of the public good; for I assure myself that whilst you carefully avoid every alteration which might endanger the benefits of an united and effective government, or which ought to await the future lessons of experience, a reverence for the characteristic rights of freemen and a regard for the public harmony will sufficiently influence your deliberations on the question how far the former can be impregnably fortified or the latter be safely and advantageously promoted.
To the preceding observations I have one to add, which will be most properly addressed to the House of Representatives. It concerns myself, and will therefore be as brief as possible. When I was first honored with a call into the service of my country, then on the eve of an arduous struggle for its liberties, the light in which I contemplated my duty required that I should renounce every pecuniary compensation. From this resolution I have in no instance departed; and being still under the impressions which produced it, I must decline as inapplicable to myself any share in the personal emoluments which may be indispensably included in a permanent provision for the executive department, and must accordingly pray that the pecuniary estimates for the station in which I am placed may during my continuance in it be limited to such actual expenditures as the public good may be thought to require.
Having thus imparted to you my sentiments as they have been awakened by the occasion which brings us together, I shall take my present leave; but not without resorting once more to the benign Parent of the Human Race in humble supplication that, since He has been pleased to favor the American people with opportunities for deliberating in perfect tranquility, and dispositions for deciding with unparalleled unanimity on a form of government for the security of their union and the advancement of their happiness, so His divine blessing may be equally conspicuous in the enlarged views, the temperate consultations, and the wise measures on which the success of this Government must depend.
The source of the preceding message from President-elect George Washington was taken from the The U.S. National Archives. A link to the address can be found using this link: President George Washington's First Inaugural Speech (1789) | National Archives
A Bit of History
From The National Archives: Background on President George Washington's First Inaugural Speech (1789)
From HISTORY.com (w/ video): George Washington: Facts, Revolution & Presidency
From HISTORY.com (w/ video): How Washington's Farewell Address Inspired Future Presidents
From The Spiritual Life: George Washington's Prayers
From Signs Wonders: George Washington's Vision and Prophecy About America
From HISTORY.com: George Washington assigned to lead the Continental Army | June 15, 1775 | HISTORY
From Grammar Book.com: Is It President’s Day, Presidents’ Day, or Presidents Day? - The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation
True Fact Check - We strive for accuracy and objectivity in the entries in this section. But if readers see anything that doesn't look historically correct, send us your feedback: dj.light@protonmail.com
CONTINUE TO SEEK THE TRUTH AS THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE
George Washington's Prayer for His Country
This prayer is read aloud each day at Mount Vernon's public wreath laying ceremony.
"I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would have the United States in his holy protection, that he would incline the hearts of the Citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to Government, to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow citizens of the United States at large, and particularly for their brethren who have served in the Field, and finally, that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all, to do Justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that Charity, humility and pacific temper of mind, which were the Characteristicks of the Devine Author of our blessed Religion, and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation. Amen”