Queen Elizabeth, The Great
This week a seasoned speechmaker proved his emerging covenantal potential once again.
Having previously won this award for his reference to Aristotle’s ethics of virtue, the Prime Minister opened the Address to Her Majesty with a speech oozing with national pride on behalf of Her subjects.
The Prime Minister exposed the deeper meaning of Jubilee paraphernalia like bunting and BBQs. Much more than symbolic, such celebration is a means of personally partaking in the family of the Commonwealth. Next week’s festivities will serve as an expression of gratitude to the Queen for sustaining the invisible association we call “the nation”, uniting our diverse society.
On the occasion of the Seventieth Anniversary of Her Accession to the Throne the Prime Minister said:
It is not so much what she has done as the way she has done it: getting the best out of people; inspiring them to serve others and their communities; helping to create that invisible thread of pride and allegiance that tugs on all our hearts and makes us happy to serve, or at least to do something for, our country in the way that she serves this country.
And so I hope that in the coming days, we can together further comfort and reassure her, and show with every bonfire, every concert and street party, and every aerobatic display a love and devotion to reciprocate the love, devotion and leadership she has shown to the whole country over seven decades…. For me, she is already Elizabeth the Great.
We recommend the watching the entire seven minute speech.
In her own words
In the Queen’s first televised Christmas message in 1957, she counselled her subjects to ‘not be afraid of the future’ but cherish ‘ageless ideals’ in the face of rapid change.
That it is possible for some of you to see me today is just another example of the speed at which things are changing all around us. Because of these changes I am not surprised that many people feel lost and unable to decide what to hold on to and what to discard. How to take advantage of the new life without losing the best of the old.
But it is not the new inventions which are the difficulty. The trouble is caused by unthinking people who carelessly throw away ageless ideals as if they were old and outworn machinery.
They would have religion thrown aside, morality in personal and public life made meaningless, honesty counted as foolishness and self-interest set up in place of self-restraint.
At this critical moment in our history we will certainly lose the trust and respect of the world if we just abandon those fundamental principles which guided the men and women who built the greatness of this country and Commonwealth.
Today we need a special kind of courage, not the kind needed in battle but a kind which makes us stand up for everything that we know is right, everything that is true and honest. We need the kind of courage that can withstand the subtle corruption of the cynics so that we can show the world that we are not afraid of the future.
It has always been easy to hate and destroy. To build and to cherish is much more difficult. That is why we can take a pride in the new Commonwealth we are building.