As I write, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England is addressing a joint session of the US Congress. But don’t expect any uproar about unconstitutional efforts to establish a state religion. King Charles has not come to our shores to establish a religion. Any questions about his authority to establish anything in these former colonies was settled 250 years ago, and he has shown no interest in relitigating the matter.
Instead he has come to remind our legislators of the “special relationship” that exists between the US and the UK. What is the nature of that special relationship? Don’t ask me. My own ancestry is Irish, and although I have immense respect for our heritage of Anglo-American law, I have never had trouble distinguishing between that heritage, as we enjoy it today, and the political realities of Anglo-American political ties today.
George Bernard Shaw famously said that “England and America are two countries separated by the same language.” We use the same words, but don’t always mean the same things, and the misunderstandings can cause new divisions. Maybe that is the real nature of the “special relationship”—the capacity for annoying each other by saying things that look so harmless on paper.
For a few years, in my work at a DC think-tank, I regularly hosted lectures by visiting British politicians, who would suggest how the US could improve its constitution. It evidently did not trouble these orators that the UK does not have a written constitution, and perhaps before suggesting amendments to our document, they might draft one of their own. You see, the word “constitution” itself means different things on different sides of the Atlantic.