The Washington Movement Defined

The Washington Movement was initially founded back in 1840 and was an abstinence organization that, at its inception, looked a lot like a more modern-day Alcoholics Anonymous.

This newly form movement by the same name has nothing to do with this earlier precursor except in its name.
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With the Washington movement proposes to do is form the foundation for a growing disenfranchisement of the current political party apparatus.  We want to test.  What will we test? Candidate's ideas and politics, their political ecosystem and their votes and affiliation.  How will we model our testing criteria:  by using as our model one of the most disinterested political characters in Western political history/theory – George Washington.

Of the founders, he was one of the few to be commercially successful and died leaving a legacy to his heirs without debt.  Additionally he was the only founder to free his slaves at his death and struggled with this decision throughout the last quarter of his life – not questioning the rightness of it but fearing for the success of the revolution.

He was meticulous in his concern for maintaining a arm's-length distance from the policies and politics he would eventually oversee and went to great lengths to provide a respectable gap between policy and his own self-enrichment.

The Washington Movement in 2013 recognizes that this is not 1776.  However, the many poorly informed commentaries about modern politics as being somehow out of alignment with an earlier more agreeable golden age of public policy wherein legislators saw eye to eye on many divisive issues is simply wrong.  And yet a man like Washington somehow managed to bridge what today appears to be a chasm.

Our goal then will be to reintroduce the concept of disinterestedness into the modern political sphere in the hopes of capturing a plurality of politicians whose imagination, morality, and ethics can be engaged.

dis·in·ter·est·ed

 adjective \-təd\

: not influenced by personal feelings, opinions, or concerns

: having no desire to know about a particular thing : not interested

We will not limit this concept to people elected to office, but instead seek to make efforts to inform the greater population of the potential of non-full-time politicians, competent and informed who seek to positively impact the public arena without fulfilling career ambitions in that same arena.


If you're interested, join us by initially re-blogging this post or liking it or tweeting at or just tell your friends about it so that we can they begin to generate interest and enthusiasm in the concept.