ABSTRACT
The "fire" of liberty provided a strong and consistent metaphor, and it, too, began at the beginning. In the nation's first Inaugural Address on April 30, 1789, George Washington told the country that the American democratic experiment represented "the sacred fire of liberty". The central norms of American foreign policy—self-government, sovereignty and national identity, collective self-defense, rule of law—became so generally accepted over time that few individuals paused long enough to reflect upon the depth of their commitments. While the Constitution, a secular document, makes only one reference to a Creator, the Declaration of Independence, a more transcendent document, invokes His name on four occasions, while references to a God appear in the Federalist several times under various labels. The wisdom and stature of George Washington blessed these original principles with the stamp of near-official authority so that no successor to Washington for more than a century and a half could violate them defiantly or openly.
