Per longstanding United States Senate tradition, on Monday afternoon a senator — this year Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND) — will read President George Washington’s farewell address on the Senate floor. The Senate website declares that no Senate tradition “has been more steadfastly maintained,” noting the first reading of the speech on the Senate floor occurred in 1862 and that “[e]very year since 1896, the Senate has observed Washington’s Birthday by selecting one of its members, alternating parties, to read the 7,641-word statement in legislative session.”

With the Senate for so many years promoting, financing, and allowing the executive branch to unilaterally pursue overt and covert interventions across the globe, one question comes to mind: Will the reading of Washington’s farewell address, with its hard-hitting noninterventionist foreign policy admonitions, have any influence on the many warmongers and war facilitators in the Senate?

Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.