Back to the Future: Celebrating our Past and Looking to the Future

[Minister of Foreign Affairs, Rt Hon Winston Peters Speech at the US Embassy event celebrating the 250th Anniversary of the Independence of the United States – Wellington]

Thank you. 

We’d like to begin by acknowledging distinguished guests here today, the Speaker of the House, the Rt Hon Gerry Brownlee; Ministers, Hon Casey Costello and Hon Scott Simpson; and, Members of Parliament; and the Dean and members of the Diplomatic Corps.

Thank you Ambassador for an inspired theme to celebrate your country’s 250th anniversary.

In Philadelphia, on July 4th, 1776, the 2nd Continental Congress declared, on behalf of the American colonies, their independence from King George the 3rd. 

There was a special alchemy in Philadelphia that day. Driven by a repudiation of an intolerable status quo, America’s Founders’ self-belief led them to ignore limits, and defy history to declare a new birth of freedom.

They were acutely aware of the price of failure – their heads – for they were committing treason, but the Founding generation of American leaders had a scarcely believable confidence in the righteousness of their cause.

And while American independence reads as an historical inevitability today – for as pamphleteer Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense, ‘there is something absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an Island’ – their revolution was far from assured.

Declaring independence is one thing, but defending it altogether another, and on the 4th of July 1776, General Washington was facing the full might of the British armada, now closing in on New York.

Washington’s Continental army’s defeat there, followed by its month’s-long retreat southwards revealed the obvious mismatch in military resources. But after defeat and retreat, the General crossed the Delaware River and his counter-attacks in Trenton and Princeton in December 1776 brought the Americans, and their newly declared independence, time. 

Washington realized that as long as his army was never forced into a major battle, leading to its total defeat, then time, and America’s great space would ultimately break British treasure and resolve. 

It did, but before the strategy succeeded and victory was finally achieved at Yorktown in 1781 were the terrible deprivations General Washington’s army faced during harsh winters at Valley Forge and Jockey Hollow.

Time and again the revolution could have failed, and if the British held every military advantage the Americans held a more decisive advantage, the quality of their leadership. 

General Washington, alongside Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison not only created and secured new political space for their citizens, but they along with their fellow Founders created in 1789 a Constitution that gave rise to a new experiment in republican government.

That experiment was every bit as revolutionary as the Declaration that preceded it, for embedded in the Constitution was Madison’s brilliant insight that a large republic would be advantaged in ‘controlling the effects of factions’ over a small one and is widely viewed as the origin of pluralism.

After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, President Jefferson extended the republican sphere westwards, all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

Over time, the Monroe Doctrine, and then eventual statehoods for Alaska and Hawaii extended the American sphere further westwards, firmly cementing the United States as a Pacific nation – something we need to remind you of, from time to time. 

Americans have been favoured by their geography, and the riches that lie within bountiful lands. But it is the American people who through their own dreams, ambition and imagination broke this ground to forge the global power whose anniversary we celebrate today.   

So, when reflecting upon the United States’ 250th and the accumulated triumphs and tragedies of American history, the very best of the national character – or its ‘Better Angels’, as President Lincoln described it in his First Inaugural Address – is revealed. 

From the Revolutionary era until our modern age, generations of Americans have ignored the limits imposed on them to forge new ground in domain after domain. 

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison saw historic opportunity when they planted the seed of republican government on such expansive and fertile space as America possessed.

For their successors, from Lewis and Clark’s grand traverse to putting man on the moon, to Voyager 1, now in interstellar space, and onwards to the new frontier of AI, the American mind has always been an expansive one. 

And just as the Revolutionaries of 1776 reinvented what it meant to be an American, in even its most inward-looking times the United States has ultimately emerged closer to Jefferson’s ideal with each reinvention or era of renewal.

The United States was forged in bloody revolution and involved in many wars since. New Zealanders and Americans have spilled blood together on battlefields far away from our homes. So, even as tonight we celebrate America’s 250th, we should take a moment to acknowledge those in uniform who have paid the ultimate sacrifice to defend the values we two old democracies share.

American writer Pearl Buck, receiving her Nobel Prize for Literature in 1942, said, “One faces the future with one’s past”. 

The United States has contributed enormously to the shaping of history, since Thomas Paine said simply, in 1776, “tis time to part”.

The expansive ambition and competitive energy that has driven the United States and its people has been a singular force in shaping global history. We pray that the lessons of your history will inform the challenges and choices you face in the future. And that America’s future is as enduring as its past. 

If that future carries forward the character of its Founders – the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin, the idealism of Thomas Jefferson, and the leadership qualities of George Washington – then that future is assured.   

On behalf of all here tonight, can we please raise our glasses to toast Ambassador Novelly, and to the people of the United States of America on their 250th anniversary. ...