George Washington Quotes
It must be laid down as a primary position and the basis of our system, that every citizen who enjoys the protection of free government, owes not only a portion of his property, but even of his service to the defense of it.
Many who oppose taxation of all kinds are very distressed by this quotation from Washington. This was made 4 years before the Constitutional Convention. Those who oppose military conscription are also not enamored by this quotation.
George Washington, 1732-1799, 1st President of the United States (VA), 1783
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Karsh was arguing that Arab citizens of Israel should be required to serve in the Israeli army and fight against other Arabs who have repeatedly attacked Israel. The Israeli tradition has been not to require Arab citizens to fight against what might be their own relatives. Karsh and others argue that Italian-Americans fought against other Italians in WWII, German-Americans fought against Germans.
This may be Kennedy’s most famous line. However he was not the first orator to express this idea however. See Khalil Gibran {601423}, Warren G. Harding {622594} and {629021}, St. John Broderick {595734}, and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. {603707} for earlier expressions of similar sentiments. Holmes seems to be the first to express the idea while the earliest seems similar phraseology seems to be the British Politician St. John Broderick in 1893 {595734}. Although, these earlier expressions existed, Theodore C. Sorensen, who assisted Kennedy with this speech and wrote the draft, had distilled it from earlier expressions and views of JFK and said that these were Kennedy’s words. At the time, he stated that was unaware of the Gibran, Harding, Broderick and Holmes sentiments. Gibran had not yet even been translated into English. However it is not clear whether Kennedy himself had inadvertently recollected the phrase from any of the other quotations. (The question was never put to him.) The St. John Broderick quotation is a possible source. Kennedy was quite familiar with British political history, and his father and been U. S. Ambassador to Great Britain. Regardless, the quotation was as great for the place and timing—his inaugural—as it was for the phraseology which might have originated elsewhere.
Monroe was Secretary of War at the time and wanted to raise an army to invade Canada. Congress debated the option but the War of 1812 ended and so did the conscription proposal. See Daniel Webster’s opposition to Monroe’s idea.
This sentiment is conceptually remarkably similar to JFK’s famous quotation in his inaugural address {589867}, however there is no evidence that Kennedy or his speechwriter were aware of Harding’s speech.
This quotation might have been an inspiration for the famous JFK quotation {589867}. See Khalil Gibran {601423}, Warren G. Harding {622594} and {629021}, and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. {603707} for similar sentiments. Holmes preceded Broderick by a few years, but Broderick came closest to the Kennedy phraseology.
This was the inception of the Civil War draft.
George Washington was the first President of the United States (1789-97), the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He presided over the convention that drafted the current United States Constitution and during his lifetime was called the "father of his country".
