Devotees of the favourite nation

George Washington, (1732-1799) hero of the American War of Indepence and first President of the United States, said this during his farewell address in 1796:

“A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.

It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld.

And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country.”

‘Ambitious and corrupted?’ Sounds like a patriot warning his country of ‘the traitor within’ to me.

Sounds like George could see Clinton, Bush, Obama, Blair, Brown, Cameron and a sizeable majority of trough-gobbling and up-the-greasy-pole-slithering Congressman, Senators and British parliamentarians in the crystal ball.

The favorite nation’ of the devotees mentioned in the preceding sentence would, of course, be Israel.