GW Said This?

[wkmac]

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

Yeah he really did, he really did say this. Oh wait, you're thinking our GW. No! No! No! This GW is the original and real deal. George Washington in his Farewell address before retiring to private life.

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/washing.htm

He aslo said this in the same address:

Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those 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.

I wonder what he would be called today if he were around to utter such words? And him a general and all, he should know better!

It's amazing how we elevate men like this to iconic status while totally ignoring what they wrote and said. And these are the guys who started the very thing that we are wasting away, what little is left of it!