George Washington deserves our respect

This week, George Washington’s 291st birthday will be celebrated by tiny numbers of Americans. That did not used to be the case.

For most of our history, Washington’s birthday was a big deal, a national holiday. Then, in 1968, George (Feb. 22) and Abe Lincoln (Feb. 12) got lumped in with everyone else in a generic “Presidents’ Day’’ holiday that largely celebrates mattress blowout sales.

George Washington has taken quite a fall in the public’s affection from the days of, “First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

This didn’t happen by accident.

As George Orwell warned,

“He who controls the past controls the future,” which partly explains why statues of our Founding Fathers and other historic notables end up in the center of so much controversy. The brand-new Martin Luther King Jr./Coretta Scott King monument in Boston has been mercilessly bashed on social media.

Still, Christopher Columbus and Robert E. Lee have nothing on the biggest name of all, the Foundingest of Founding Fathers, George Washington, America’s “indispensable man.”

A simple fact: no George Washington, no United States. We would not have won the War of Independence without him. The United States Constitution would not have been written or ratified without him. The early republic would not have survived the rift between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson without him.

But today’s America is a divided land with no George Washington to unite us. Those with a beef against America have long known that if they can topple George, they can undercut the moral foundation upon which our Country was built.

In Los Angeles, this became literally the case. On Aug. 13, 2020, in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, vandals toppled a life-sized bronze of Washington that had stood in Grand Park in downtown Los Angeles since 1933.

This was not a spontaneous act. According to the LAPD, the alleged perpetrators carried in their backpacks gas masks, helmets, googles, laser pointers and “a change of clothing to conceal their identity.” Vandals went hunting for Washington and bagged him, something King George III’s army was unable to do in the 18th century.

I contacted the Los Angeles district attorney’s office about the status of these cases but have yet to get an answer.

Over the past two-plus years, I have periodically checked in on George to see when and if