The Land of the Free: The American Dream from England

There is an iconography to the American view of freedom.  The Lincoln Memorial & The White House. The Stars and Stripes hanging from a pole with pride everywhere from Honolulu to Maine.  The fundamental principle of freedom and liberty in the United States is a national institution in its own right, a precious jewel in the crown of the worlds most powerful republic.  Our friends across the pond could not be more different to us in the way in which they celebrate their freedom.  The Americans are enthusiastic, excited and proud of their equality, their rights and their national duty under god, the British reluctantly vote every few years and cling on to their old ways, after all changing all that would be far too much bother.

In the opening lines of A Tale of Two Cities Dickens drew a comparison between Britain and France.  In a slightly less significant article tonight I present to you the differences between the United Kingdom and the United States in the systems, and how our cultural bond is separated in the political sphere.

Constitution

The Constitution of the United States is the shortest document of its kind in the world, it is a clear and concise reflection of the ultimate value of American society and the Americans quite correctly take considerable pride in the document and her story.  Perhaps the greatest achievement of America's supreme law is that she has been amended only 27 times in her history; there is no perfect system - particularly in law - but the United States hold a document which is near enough theoretically perfect; the Constitution is everywhere in America.

Most British people on the other hand believe that we don't have a constitution, we do have one it just isn't very good.  Various statutes and drafts of Westminster Law as well as other documents like Magna Carta and the European Convention on Human Rights make up a bizarre mix of what Governments do and what they can't do.  In the UK 800 years of Magna Carta are passing, there have been a few bits and pieces on the television but most people won't even notice, could you imagine such a thing happening in the US, indeed I wouldn't be surprised if our cousins were already making a bigger fuss of Magna Carta than we do.

President/Monarch

If you know your history you will know that the role of the monarchy is central to how the United States came about.  A certain dislike of George III (but, to be fair he was insane) was prevalent in the colonies when independence was asserted and since then the United States have plugged this gap with a presidency.  Since 1776 the monarch has changed in the UK, slowly but surely the role of the monarch diminished until it became the constitutional symbol of tradition it is today.  Yet an idea as big as a king or queen doesn't just diminish and the role of president has grown in its own way, the President has much in common with the crown these days:
- Head of State
- Iconic i.e. appears on money, in images of national pride and physical institutions associated with the office.  Such as The White House being as recognisable as Buckingham Palace.
- Top family - The American next of kin to the President is called the first lady, it seems to Scarlet that this implies a social hierarchy centred around the office.  In the United Kingdom the royal family are at the top of an aristocratic class in a clearly defined socio economic unit.

I'm not trying to say that the President and the Queen are the same, they are clearly very different roles both in law and in social convention it is simply interesting to see the clear influence of the British system on the American one.

The key difference is in the right to remove the President from office, this basis of the people electing the top man/woman and then removing them is entrenched in law and again it is in clear law, the role of the monarch in the UK is much more abstract.  Technically speaking the Queen appoints the Prime Minister, she doesn't have to pay any attention to the election result legally, she just does!

National Iconography

The 2 points I have discussed both suggest that image is important in the American political setup and there can be no doubt that the American love for image and icons runs through the system.  The Americans through neccesity must draw their images and icons from the system around them because it is a very new country and the system as our cousins know it is really the only one their nation has ever needed.  When we think of emblems of the American Political ideal we don't just look at the two I have suggested but others which ride through their nation and there are always differences from our own so it seems:

- Uncle Sam - A national embodiment of the state, we don't personify the state in the UK, we have Britannia and John Bull but no one has heard of these for hundreds of years!

- The Stars and Stripes - There is a huge amount of pride for the flag in the United States.  Indeed even the confederate flag is loved by millions in the South, the physical embodiment of the nation in colour flying proudly is beautiful to our friends in the United States.  There can be no doubt that the United Kingdom doesn't have this same level of pride, our Union Jack is familiar across the planet as a symbol of small nations working together to create a greater state, but we really don't care.

There are differences in our nations and our political, economic and social views but we are one in our ideas of freedom, liberty and honour.  Our nations our united in a special relationship that shines across the world as a beacon of equality, trust and mututal respect. 

Again I think of our beautiful land of tradition, where the freedom lives through thousands of years of slow progression.

Again I think of a beautiful land where the liberty was fought for and won and laid out before the people in words.

To the United Kingdom and the United States, two lands divided in culture and united in love.