The Father of a Nation

George Washington was asked, when he defeated the British forces and established a new confederation of 13 states, if he wanted to be called King George. I would have wanted to be a fly on the general’s tent when that question was asked and be privy to the conversation that transpired. I only get my images from history books, and the short reply was, “No!”

We became casual, bordering on “disrespectful” when I called the first U.S. President, Georgie, Reagan’s VP George W. H. Bush as Georgie I, and George W. Bush as Georgie II. I lived across the Potomac during the Clinton Years shortly before Lewinsky became a household name and then moved to Hawaii in Honolulu from where I attended an economic development zone conference in D.C. President Clinton and VP Gore bounded down to our group like a couple of movie stars, and were greeted as such; they had us for boxed dinner on the lawn of the WH one afternoon.

I was also Mr. Mom in Falls Church, Va. to two diagnosed ASD children while my spouse wrote policy papers for USAID so I got assigned to drive out-of-towners to Mt. Vernon. I frequented the Iwo Jima memorial next to Arlington Cemetery and the Carillon when USAID Mama still had her office in Roslyn and I delivered the eldest to empty mammary glands for lunch, waited at Iwo Jima’s parking lot so I did not have to drop a Georgie on the parking meters.

The quarter’s image of the renowned false teeth, his picture in the American dollar, and his celebrated persona in the town that bears his name (the American U was not too far behind with Georgetown), Georgie became a next-door neighbor and acquaintance.

It is the nation that he started that grabs historical interest as this unique experiment in federation and State’s rights, and the balancing of powers between the executive, the legislative and the judiciary, is an emulated phenomenon worldwide, notwithstanding the fact that it took a century for the African slaves to be emancipated from the agrarian

South, and another century to make the gains real during LBJ Civil Right’s legislation, a move that had implications on the other minority groups in the country, particularly the Asian Americans (China got the brunt of the prejudice with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that was not repealed till 1943) on the Pacific shores.

Not unique, colonial Spain executed many Sino-Pilipino for being a threat in number, dominating trade. CNMI indigenes understand only too well, the right to real estate is fundamental, protected by the Commonwealth Constitution until we diluted ancestral lands with the notion of public lands, a debate currently in progress in the CNMI. While this is not directly related to the Georgie of our subject, the nation he spawned had not been kind to its native population where they were driven to reservations and confined from the land that used to be theirs.

Half-caucasian Obama whose father was pure bred African rather than a progeny of the Deep South, was acceptable to cross the WH color line considering that he showed wit and native brilliance but the nation was not yet ready for a woman. That may not be for long as Madame President is poised to follow in the Oval Office after BH Obama.

The democracy that Georgie got started took more than two centuries to get an African-American to the executive office, a century and a half for the female gender population to vote, and perhaps, this time, we might be a democratic land where the individual is recognized for just being, a human with rights guaranteed and practiced as prescribed in its Constitution.

This year marks the 240th year of this democratic experiment elevating the commoner to be at par with the royals before the law. That it took some time in the doing is not to denigrate the intent. Lincoln reminded folks that American union began in 1776, in the Revolution against England, not in 1787 at Philadelphia’s Constitutional convention, intent for each to have freedom of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as nature’s reality rather than a tenet of constitutional law. America is still putting flesh to the skeletal vision.

With the frenzy over The Donald in current U.S. politics, we are asked to set aside the inscription of Emma Lazarus poem, the last part being in every U.S. history textbook:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

The poem was read at the unveiling of the Statue in 1903 but the inscription now read by visiting tourist of the Upper New York Bay Island close to New Jersey was bronzed in 1909. It defined the United States for more than a century until now that we rage over immigrants, particularly Islamic ones.

General Georgie probably never anticipated this; he lived when we were a mere 2.5 million in 1776 to 320 million people today from all over the world. We’ve come a long way, Georgie!