Friend,

“The common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection.”

President George Washington, in his 1796 Farewell Address, was all too prescient about what American politics would be like in 2022.

Another Founder who became president – James Madison – also could have been writing about today’s state of political affairs when he wrote in 1787: 

“Complaints are everywhere heard…that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.”

Today we mark the achievements of the Founders and the other great presidents throughout our nation’s history. As we commemorate the 290th anniversary of the first president’s birth this week, we at No Labels stand committed to Washington’s vision of a nation that puts country before party – 50 truly United States of America.