Our way endures because it matters  

Dear friends,
 
There’s a great American expression: go big or go home. And tonight, you certainly lived up to that.
 
We’re here to celebrate a transatlantic relationship and friendship that has created history’s best of times, and stood solid through the worst of times.
 
Not far from here, in the Dutch town of Margraten, more than eight thousand American soldiers lie. Young men who crossed an ocean to free a people they had never met, and who never made it home.
 
Every one of those graves has been adopted by a family. For eighty years, locals brought flowers. They know their names. They learnt their stories.
 
That is who we are. Ever since the Mayflower, the destiny of America and of Europe has been inextricably linked.
 
Europe was there 250 years ago. When Washington needed allies, it was Lafayette from France who stood beside him.
 
As the First World War set Europe ablaze, young Americans fought for a continent most had never seen. A generation later, their sons stormed the beaches of Normandy and Sicily, and fought alongside us.
 
When the guns fell silent, America stayed. You helped us rebuild. We created the European Union in lockstep. Not to beat anyone, but to grow with each other, and because we knew that any anchor we cast together would be the one to steady a world that had been on fire for half a century.
 
And when, later, autocrats built a wall through Berlin, we stood against it together, until President Reagan told Mr Gorbachev to tear down that wall.
 
On September 12th 2001, France’s most famous newspaper spoke for us all, saying sombrely: “Nous sommes tous Américains” as we answered the call.
 
Through every storm of the last 250 years, we have defended our values and our way of life – together.  
 
Now, I know the EU is sometimes seen as the more boring, complex part of this relationship. We prefer the term “predictable,” but alright, we get it. 
 
And like in any marriage, we have disagreements. We won’t agree on what constitutes good coffee. We’re not too sure why you don’t like the Eurovision. And we all know it’s football, not soccer. 
 
And sometimes there’s also real criticism or reproach. Some fair, some less so. Where we could do more, we act.
 
And where it is less fair, we say so unapologetically, as friends do.
 
It is true that we each do things in our own way, but our differences are often exaggerated. On both sides of the Atlantic, kids read the same Nancy Drew books, watched the same Jean-Claude Van Damme movies and danced to the same U2 songs. Generations discovered New York through the sitcom Friends, without ever setting foot in the Big Apple.
 
But it is deeper still. It is the way we see the world. The same conviction that power belongs to the people. 
 
Ambassador Puzder, you have a painting hanging here in your Mission, of the drafting of the Constitution. Crumpled papers, endless arguments and revisions. It could almost be the European Parliament or Congress. Democracy is messy. It was messy in Philadelphia, it’s messy in Washington, and it’s messy here. But out of it emerges the most precious thing of all: Government of the people, by the people, for the people. 
 
And that is what our enemies will never understand.
 
And yet, for all the history shared, I know that few things in the last weeks have warmed American hearts, and likely confused minds, more than seeing thousands of Dutch football fans, clad in bright orange, jump from left to right through Kansas; or the kilted Scottish Tartan Army bellowing out Do-Re-Mi, as they squeezed into Boston’s Fenway Park to watch the Red Sox, asking why they need nine innings.
 
This World Cup has brought people together in a way that politics never could. It has shown that our differences will never outweigh what we have in common. That we may sometimes be confused, frustrated even, at each other, but we know our shared desire for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness will always overcome. It is those shared ideals that ended slavery; that stormed those beaches; and tore down that wall.
 
Our way endures because it matters. Because the values that our flags represent are ingrained in the souls of men, in our very being. And because we are ready to stand up for them.
 
There are those in this world who believe differently. Who believe that control is more desirable than liberty. Who want the rule of one over the rule of the many. 
 
Our history tells them they are wrong, and our future will prove it.
 
Happy Birthday, America. Here’s to the next 250.