President's Day

A Rasmussen Survey out today finds 37% of Americans consider Ronald Reagan to be the most influential president of the past half century, with JFK a distant 2nd with 21% and Clinton with 17%.

There is, however, one president that most all Americans believe to be the most influential of all---for all kinds of reasons.

Stephanie Wilson has written an interesting and informative blog on this man. I encourage you to read it.

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President's Day

As most of us are aware by simply scanning our email inbox and all the "President's Day Sales" advertised there, Monday is President's Day. A day we hopefully set aside every third Monday of February. This is the day America historically commemorated Washington's birthday.

And while we celebrate all of our American presidents on this day, we specifically remember one of the greatest pivotal figures in our united history, George Washington. A man that by his very word motivated and moved a group of peasant revolutionaries to successfully battle the strongest, most organized, most well-funded army in the world at that time, Great Britain. And by so doing, helped to create a culture of freedom and democracy that to this day, stands without measure.

Washington was a man who was very much human ... very much like many of us. A man not brought up in privilege, a man who could have dramatically changed America as we know it simply by virtue of an unrestrained ego. And to many in the colonies, the rise of this man and installment of a new American monarchy would have been accepted. But through providential design, Washington's convictions and ideals and those of our framers outweighed what could have been a human response to success and victory. And instead of installing himself as king, he insisted upon presidency.

And so on April 30, 1789, George Washington took the oath of office and set in place a new country ... and a new way of life. A new land where people from privilege or not, from the north or the south, or the east or the west, from varying points of view, with God at its center, were granted inalienable rights - with freedom at its core.

"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

The Declaration of Independence.

Washington would serve two terms as our first U.S. president, from 1789 to 1797.

Now, for more than 200 years, U.S. presidents and their families have resided at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., in a sandstone mansion known as the White House. It has 132 rooms, 412 doors, 28 fireplaces—and not a single throne.

For a fabulous and moving 2-minute video on the life of George Washington, click here.

Help your children experience history by creating a patriot village made from pretzels. For instructions, click here.

Image source: History Channel