February 18, 2019

Why We Should Celebrate Washington’s Birthday, Not Presidents Day

America’s greatest statesmen did not think that national holidays were merely about family dinners, watching fireworks, or getting a three-day weekend.

By Arthur Milikh

America’s greatest statesmen did not think that national holidays were merely about family dinners, watching fireworks, or getting a three-day weekend.

These occasions, to the contrary, were needed to encourage all citizens to together raise their gaze above the enthrallment of their private lives, so as to see or imagine something greater than themselves and worthy of their admiration.

Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July, first conceived by our Founders, are illustrative.

Thanksgiving, as George Washington writes in his Thanksgiving Day proclamation, should instill in citizens gratitude to our nation and our creator, thereby asking citizens for a moment to acknowledge our frailty, our dependence on higher powers, and the imperfection of our understanding.

Thanksgiving, therefore, is a holiday that restrains democratic self-satisfaction and pride.

The Fourth of July, by contrast, celebrates courage and manliness, the kind required to defeat a great empire and to found a community devoted to political liberty. It reminds citizens of public spiritedness on behalf of our ideals, and that our ideals require of us sacrifice and courage.

Thus, these two holidays celebrate starkly contrasting spirits — that of subordination and that of assertion, both healthy aspects of the republican character.

What we today call “Presidents Day” is in fact Washington’s birthday. Just like a republican people must on occasion be reminded of the need for manly assertiveness and modest gratitude, so too must they be reminded of examples of human greatness.

First instituted as a federal holiday in 1879, this day ought to celebrate Washington, not an abstraction called “presidents.” There is no meaning in celebrating “presidents” generally, and for this reason, the holiday today has no real content, being viewed as merely another day off work.

To confuse James Buchanan for Washington is to conflate copper and gold.

During Washington’s life, he deservedly became one of the most famous men in the world. His remarkable courage and prudence had, despite great odds and at great peril, carried to victory our 13 colonies against the most powerful empire on earth. The weight of this task fell upon his shoulders.

In times of peace, moreover, Washington’s self-possession and equanimity — by contrast to the brilliant but somewhat impulsive advisers surrounding him—meant that the country’s fate could be responsibly entrusted to him. The example of his control over his passions, his judgement, and devotion to the common good made him the new model of republican greatness, which until recently filled the American imagination for generations.

Indeed, so clear were his virtues that both Federalists and Anti-Federalists reached unanimous agreement about Washington’s worthiness to be president, despite their immense disagreements on almost everything else.

Today, examples of human greatness are needed perhaps more than ever. In the hurly-burly of the crass and silly images in popular culture, film, and music, such examples are absent.

In our books and textbooks, individual greatness is often tacitly denied by teaching that vast cosmic forces — like economic forces, or technological advancement — rather than individuals, cause events. And when individuals are the cause, they are often characterized merely as oppressors.

Our experiences of these things combine to instruct us in vulgar aspirations, enervating fatalism, or hatred of greatness.

Revering Washington and living with his example is not just a matter of arbitrary, antiquarian taste. In fact, reverence for human greatness, as Tocqueville observes, is among the things most needed in democracy.

One of the many reasons for this is to counterbalance the overwhelming power of a democratic majority. Tocqueville writes:

In aristocracies, men often have a greatness and a force that are their own … There is nothing like this among democratic peoples. [In democracies], public favor seems as necessary as the air that one breathes, and to be in disagreement with the mass is, so to speak, not to live. [The majority] does not need to use the laws to bend those who do not think like it. It is enough for it to disapprove of them. Their sense of isolation and their impotence immediately overwhelms them and drives them to despair. [“Democracy in America,” Mansfield Trans., p. 569]

In this context, human greatness means maintaining moral and intellectual independence despite the tyranny of the majority over the individual. Such independence is the source of statesmanship and the kind of steadiness of character required for it.

It is inconceivable that a man like Washington would go along with arbitrary new tastes or ideas. But without such examples as his remembered on a specially assigned day for all Americans to consider, we have few occasions to learn from his example.

Arthur Milikh is assistant director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics at The Heritage Foundation.


Republished from The Daily Signal.

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.