The King’s Visit and the Roots of American Order

It may seem odd that the reigning English monarch is visiting the United States to celebrate the 250th anniversaryopens in a new tab of American independence. Yet, as King Charles III acknowledged in his speech to a joint session of Congressopens in a new tab, the ties binding the American Republic and the United Kingdom are stronger than any ill will lingering from the late unpleasantness of the Revolution.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about His Majesty’s speechopens in a new tab is how he noted the ways that the constitutional vision of the American Founders is an inheritance of Western civilization through our British ancestors.

“They carried with them, and carried forward, the great inheritanceopens in a new tab of the British Enlightenment—as well as the ideals which had an even deeper historyopens in a new tab in English common law and Magna Carta,” he said. “These roots run deep, and they are still vital.”

While Charles acknowledged the real problems facing the English-speaking peoples, he averred that returning to those deep roots will sustain us.

The wisdom at the heart of the king’s speech reflects the insights of a great American conservative thinker: Russell Kirkopens in a new tab. In his 1974 “Roots of American Orderopens in a new tab”—written to commemorate the 200th anniversary of American independence—the Michigan writer also stressed the need to understand the common roots of British and American civilization.

Like His Majesty, Kirk did not conceive of this legacy as some kind of narrow ethnic heritage, let alone a blood-and-soil nationalism. Rather, both men understand the West as a kind of spiritual inheritance.

Read more in Daily Signal.