George Washington’s Prophetic Warnings About Enemies Within

President Trump just delivered the 2020 convocation speech at West Point, congratulating the cadet graduates and reminding the world that the U.S. has rebuilt its military forces with such high-tech capability as to have unchallenged superiority in any theatre. While the President’s speech was entirely appropriate, it is ironic that it comes at a time when it’s wholly apparent to most observers that America’s greatest threat now is not external, but internal. And while the response to the recent urban chaos and violence requires more effective National Guard, police action and law enforcement tactics, strategically what is most important are soft power initiatives that invalidate false narratives and reduce misunderstanding and division in the country, which would in turn diminish issues and opportunities for exploitation by bad actors. In addition to Antifa, Black Lives Matter (BLM), and the “swarms” of lesser known leftist and anarchist militants, many of the crazies in the streets are ignorant opportunistic hoodlums. The elected officials who have enabled the chaos created by the aforementioned in various municipalities are the product of higher education institutions that have failed to inculcate a basic appreciation of the American system and an understanding of the responsibilities required to protect freedom and rights in ways that maintain order, protect property and keep things working. Their views are reinforced and sustained by most of the media—in both traditional channels and the social media outlets—in ways that perpetuate politically correct narratives being accepted by a large portion of our population.

The chief problem in need of a solution is succinctly stated by Kyle Shideler, the director for homeland security and counterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy: “With the successful promulgation of the radical message [the narrative] of America as bastion of white supremacy by presidential candidates, cable news anchors, and generations of tenured professors, Antifa is unlikely to lack for recruits and support—rhetorical or otherwise—any time in the near future.” One of the important goals of these narratives is to reinforce white-guilt and self-doubt, resulting in large sectors of society becoming demoralized and paralyzed. And this has serious consequences when in many urban localities, hostility and disrespect toward police undermines their morale and determination to do their job to enforce the law. And when police can’t do their job, they too get demoralized, and resignations and early retirements go up. The outcome of all this is invariably diminished public safety and increased lawlessness, which is the radical left’s goal. As it stands, leniency—after successfully neutralizing the police and committing horrendous destruction of property, ransacking big box retailers, upscale shopping districts, and looting the very stores and brands that symbolize the fruit of what law and order and capitalist success bring—empowers the left to do more and bigger things that advance their long-term goal, which is the total transformation of America. Compounding the problem of bringing about a corrective and restoring balance is the fact that competing views and alternative narratives are being increasingly marginalized, censured and blocked. And we are now at a point when Americans who exercise their first amendment rights to express views that go against the dominant politically correct narratives are not just silenced through shaming and bullying, but increasingly they are being fired from corporate jobs, professional sports teams and other employers and venues.  The First Amendment that is at the heart of our Constitutional freedom and differentiates America from almost every other county is being progressively diminished. And when that freedom is gone, surely others will soon follow. Is it a coincidence that theCOVID-19 shutdown and attendant nullification of Americans’ Constitutional rights have been followed by an outbreak of urban warfare and assault on police and authority? We can’t know, but it’s clear that the leaders of Antifa and BLM didn’t miss a beat in organizing immediately after the death of George Floyd, and in subsequent days, continued to work in a well-funded and highly coordinated fashion. They targeted cities, carried out the logistics of transporting people, arranging for the delivery of pallets of bricks, bats and gasoline to break windows and start fires, knowing that the energy levels of non-affiliated urban hoodlums and opportunists after nearly three months of pent-up frustration from sheltering and being cooped up would likely result in extreme violence, destruction and looting. It succeeded. What this period of urban chaos and destruction has revealed is that the narratives that have turned Americans against America have worked to increase both the number of street revolutionaries and the numbers who are passive in the face of the anti-law and order, anti-business and anti-American violence. And we should assume that leaders of Antifa, BLM and other radical groups see this success as confirmation to move forward with next steps to seed the collapse of America and gain more power.

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Washington's Penetrating articulation of three threats to freedom and the republican form of American democracy

While they applaud concessions like shifting public spending and defunding the police, the radical left finds its greatest motivation in actions that move the country closer to the end game. A central part of that is to delegitimize American institutions of authority by erasing and deconstructing history, so as to further disorient and disconnect Americans from their heritage. That’s why targeting the desecration, tearing down and removal of national monuments is an important next objective. In Wilmington, Delaware city officials took the statue of Columbus down before anyone could dismember or destroy it. In St. Paul, Minnesota and Richmond, Virginia statues of Columbus were toppled by radical activists. In Boston, the statue of Columbus was beheaded, jihadi-style. It matters not that Columbus was an evangelist and strong advocate of Christian kindness. Neither does it matter that he never saw nor set foot on the North American continent, and therefore never enslaved or abused any indigenous native Americans. With the white supremacist colonial narrative having long been established, Columbus is an easy target. But make no mistake: toppling Columbus is just a stepping stone to desecrating and removal of even more high value targets such as the memorials and statues of founders George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who were slave-holders. At his West Point address, President Trump paid tribute to George Washington, whose statue can be found on the campus, noting that Washington called West Point “the most important post in America.” After serving two terms as the nation’s first president, Washington renounced serving a third term and left office with a “Farewell Address,” in which he stated his belief that the greatest threat to America would be internal and not a military threat from overseas. President Trump would do well to develop a battle plan for victory against internal enemies around that Farewell Address—what Washington called “a warning from a departing friend.” While prophetic in nature and reprinted more than the Declaration of Independence, the Farewell Address, was a penetrating articulation of three threats to freedom and the republican form of American democracy:

• the failure of institutions to keep people informed and enlightened;
• the problems of factions and hyper-partisanship;
• and the decline of religious obligation and national morality.

Applied to today, what’s needed in the Trump battle plan is accelerated reform of the K-12 public school system, the universities and the media to ensure more balance and the upholding all the protections associated with the First Amendment. Obviously, this means individuals cannot be fired for exercising their free speech rights, but equally important it would help citizens and aspiring politicians develop critical faculties and become better informed and enlightened. Second, more can be done outside public policy initiatives to elevate the value of religious obligation and practice, which strengthen families, mitigate juvenile delinquency and crime, and provide a higher purpose and meaning in life where bigotry has no place and tolerance is more abundant. All of this over time would provide a more enlightened population from which leaders would arise and get elected better informed and equipped for bipartisan cooperation around policies that actually solve problems.