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The Washington Monument is the tallest structure in Washington DC. The 555-foot tall obelisk took almost 40 years to complete.
Washington Monument with its reflection in the Capitol Reflecting Pool.
On the left hand side, the Smithsonian Castle.
On the Mall, the tents for the oncoming 4th of July festivities, and in the background the buildings in Arlington on the other side of the Potomac.
The Washington Monument is a 555-foot marble obelisk, built to honor the USA first president George Washington
I really enjoy to be back to the US and DC to discuss cloud technology with thought leaders from around the world.
Built to honor George Washington, the United States' first president, the 555-foot marble obelisk towers over Washington, D.C.
President George Washington thought political parties were self-serving tyrants that exacerbated tribal and regional differences for their own benefit at the expense of the country, e.g. North or South, city or rural. In his farewell address, America's first outgoing President asked Americans to step outside the hypnotic spell, which he called the "awe", of political parties and party leaders in order to serve the greater good of the country and its citizen government. "Unawed" would mean carefully deliberated, uninfluenced by party hyperbole and seduction. Washington declared to his fellow countrymen:
"This government, the offspring of our own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.
All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests.
However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."
–Declared President George Washington in his Farewell Address to the nation in 1796.