This week, the King of England spoke to a Joint Session of Congress. His speech addressed the long-standing “special relationship” between the U.K. and the U.S. I suppose that this is what was rightly expected. I wish, though, that he had instead said something like this:
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice-President and all you other traitors to your own cause.
Two-hundred fifty years ago, your ancestors decided to declare independence from my ancestors. You did that because you claimed that you wanted to be governed by a system that respected the basic freedoms of all people and that controlled government power by a system of checks and balances.
Well, how’s that working out?
As we look at you from the vantage point of across the sea, all we can say about what you have now become is that we’re glad you left.
You guys talked about how you were going establish a haven of liberty and equality. Great ideas. And brilliantly but meaninglessly expressed in Mr. Jefferson’s document. I still sometimes read the Declaration of Independence when I have trouble sleeping. You really gave a lot of freedom and equality to the Black population. And don’t get me started on the Indians. I missed the part in the Constitution about the Trail of Tears.
But you’ve gotten better, haven’t you? To the extent that you made any advancements, your big Supreme Court is wiping them away. Can’t give priority to the previously oppressed any more. Can’t let anybody who isn’t white get into the country and if there are some already here, well, as your cowboys would say – whoo boy – they gotta’ vamoose.
You didn’t want taxation without representation. Have you paid attention to the way your government works? You know that proportionally, those who can’t afford to pay their taxes pay more than those who can. And you know why. Because those who can afford it still complain about it and have the money, and therefore the power, to hire lobbyists who fix the tax laws for them.
And then there is the checks and balances thing. Power was supposed to be exercised carefully, deliberately. The last thing you revolutionaries wanted was another King. My Fifth Great Grandfather, King George III, was not to be copied. But, yet, Mr. President, you are acting just like him. He is known, of course, as “The Mad King.”
So, let me conclude with this with a small verse sung to a song that you know so well, “The Star-Spangled Banner”:
“Oh, say can you see
Why we’re so glad you’re free
Free of us
Let’s please discuss
How we can be free of you
Oh, I wish he had said something like that.
We were right 