Mr. Washington, Dude Extraordinaire

Randall Munroe, of the excellent web comic xkcd, has re-written President Washington's farewell address, published in 1796 in contemporary language. The themes still seem highly relevant, especially in Munroe's accessible language. These days, bumping into the writings of founding fathers often seems powerfully prescient; they were strikingly smart guys. As Munroe says in his post: "Wow. That was fun, depressing, inspiring, and a little bit spooky." Mr. Washington, take it away.

Getting in the way of the law for the sake of power plays similarly screws things up. Playing that game creates groups just looking out for themselves, turning crazy splinter groups into a powerful force. Let this get too bad and you’ll probably have the country tossed back and forth wildly as the various parties with their pet issues fight for power, rather than nice, consensual, unified government.

Parties are probably gonna look like they’re helping with one popular issue or another, so you’re gonna want support them, but I bet the guys in charge of them will just turn out to be power-hungry assholes who want to run everything.

Photo: thanks, kakissel