In a speech delivered 250 years after the Gottfried Leibniz-Cotton Mather-Benjamin Franklin intellectually-guided American colonies launched, at Concord and Lexington in April 1775, the American Revolution against the murderous British Empire, U.S. President Donald Trump obsequiously praised that same Empire at the banquet that King Charles III threw for him at Windsor Castle on Sept. 17.
Trump stated that, “The British gave the world the Magna Carta, the modern parliament, and Francis Bacon’s scientific method. They gave us the works of Locke and Hobbes, Smith and Burke, Newton and Blackstone…. The legal, intellectual, cultural and political traditions of this kingdom have been among the highest achievements of mankind: There has really never been anything like it. The British Empire laid the foundations of law, liberty, free speech and individual rights virtually everywhere the Union Jack has ever flown, including a place called America….
“His Majesty spoke eloquently about the bond which inspired Sir Winston Churchill… and the bust is in the Oval Office right now, the beautiful bust of Winston Churchill… to coin the phrase special relationship. But seen from American eyes, the word special does not begin to do it justice. We’re joined by history and fate, by love and language, and by transcendent ties of culture, tradition, ancestry and destiny.”
Trump, not surprisingly, read from a speech apparently prepared for him by a speechwriter, and evidently without the intellectual presence to register what he was saying, or to change it.
