The Queen's Warning

Queen Elizabeth's statement to the US Congress in 1991 reads very differently today.

Today in Washington DC, King Charles III begins an official visit as the United Kingdom’s head of state. It will include an address to Congress.

At any other time since the Second World War, this visit would have been welcomed by most or all of the American political spectrum. The UK and the UK are old allies, after all. And 2026 is the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The King’s visit should be as uncontroversial as Queen Elizabeth’s was in 1976, when she helped celebrate the American bicentennial by dancing with Gerald Ford.

But today’s America is polarized to a greater extent than at any time since the Civil War.

The President sometimes explicitly talks as if he is President of Red America only. And he has been just as divisive in international affairs, where his taunts and insults directed at the UK — even at the British soldiers who fought and died for America in Afghanistan — have made him a hated figure in the UK and diminished America’s standing among Britons to an extent unprecedented in modern history.

Among Americans who oppose Trump, opposition to the visit and the pageantry surrounding it is high. American Britons, it is higher.

As I’ve written before, whatever you think of this, don’t blame King Charles. The King doesn’t decided which state visits to undertake and which to avoid; the elected prime minister does. That’s the British constitution. If you’re angry, blame Keir Starmer. The King takes orders; he does not give them. Some people seem to struggle with that notion. But Britain — like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, etc. — is both constitutional monarchy and democracy. The two are not at odds with each other. In fact, we monarchists would argue, a constitutional monarchy is an ideal foundation on which to build a democracy, which is why so many free, democratic countries — including Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands — are constitutional monarchies.

But let’s set all that aside.

In 1991, Queen Elizabeth became the first British monarch to address Congress. Following is a transcript of the opening of her speech.

In that era, what Her Majesty said was close to an article of faith in the United States, the United Kingdom, and across the Western world. But today, it reads very differently

Today, it is a prescient warning.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, distinguished members of Congress, I know what a rare privilege it is to address a joint meeting of your two houses. Thank you for inviting me.

The concept so simply described by Abraham Lincoln as government by the people, of the people, for the people, is fundamental to our two nations. Your Congress and our Parliament are the twin pillars of our civilizations, and the chief among the many treasures that we have inherited from our predecessors. We, like you, are staunch believers in the freedom of the individual and the rule of a fair and just law. These principles are shared with our European partners and with the wider Atlantic community. They are the bedrock of the Western world.

Some people believe that power grows from the barrel of a gun. So it can. But history shows that it never grows well, nor for very long. Force, in the end, is sterile. We have gone a better way. Our societies rest on mutual agreement, on contract, and on consensus. A significant part of your social contract is written down in your Constitution. Ours rests on custom and will. The spirit behind both, however, is precisely the same. It is the spirit of democracy.

These ideals are clear enough, but they must never be taken for granted. They have to be protected and nurtured through every change and fluctuation.