Speeches

Tony Blair accepts the Liberty Medal from the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia

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Thank you very, very much indeed.

Mr. President, the Governor, Mr. Mayor, David, ladies and gentlemen, it’s a tremendous privilege and honor to receive this Liberty Medal and to be here with you this evening in Philadelphia. I’m so delighted to be in such distinguished company not least, and of course foremost, the master of politics, my friend, my partner, my good colleague President Clinton.

He and Hillary were great friends to me and my family and, if you’ll allow me, it’s also a wonderful thing for me tonight not just to be here myself but to have my wife Cherie, my son Euan, and my daughter Kathryn along here with me.

So, look, when there is an award given at a place that commemorates the founding of the U.S. Constitution, it can present certain presentational difficulties for a British prime minister. And, you know, look, I’m sorry about what happened in the past. One of the things you find as British prime minister, wherever you go in the world, you know after a time, when they tell you all about the problems in their area then it always reaches this point where they say, “It was the British that did that.” It’s a great unifying theme of our diplomacy.

But it’s one thing you should maybe know also that of course ... well, you do know for example that there were many British people, not least an English man Tom Paine who played a great part in the Constitution itself. But you should know also that despite all that history those years ago, people look today, not just in America, but outside of America too, at the U.S. Constitution and its celebration of that great engine of human progress, the universal desire for liberty. It’s your Constitution, for your country, but we all, when we look at it, and when we read it, feel a tremendous sense of pride in human achievement.

And for me the idea of liberty has always been more than just the idea of freedom. It’s also been about the striving of the human spirit.

You know, I think a lot about striving when I’m out in the Middle East peace process. Just last night I was in Jerusalem. And sometimes I look at the issue of liberty and striving through the eyes of those in the Middle East. And just a few weeks before I visited Jacob’s Well in Nablus. And, of course, the word Israel — Jacob was renamed Israel because of striving with God. And when Moses liberated the people of Israel — “Let my people go” — he did so, and in doing so, showed that liberty is not something passive, it’s something active.

Now when I spoke to Larry earlier about my speech I said to him, what would you like me to speak about? He said, Well, I don’t know, but make it short.
So I will give you in just a few minutes my seven lessons of liberty.

The first is that every milestone on the road to liberty marks a struggle. Liberty is not acquired by accident, it’s won by endeavor. No people, no country, no nation, has ever won their liberty except by striving. And in creating liberty there is opposition, there is even defeat, and occasionally despair along the way. But liberty is about the overcoming.

And the second lesson of liberty is that it comes from people who lead. My office in London, believe it or not, is in John Adams’ old house, who was the first ambassador of the United States to the Court of St. James, and also, of course, president of the United States. And he was a deist, which means that he believed powerfully in God as creator but put aside religious dogma. And he and the work of others and the belief of others made a huge and indelible imprint on your Constitution.

So when we examine the history of liberty what we find is not some predetermined course of events but ordinary human beings doing extraordinary things in the midst of earth-changing events.

The third lesson of liberty is this: All people want to be free. Not all people are free but all people want to be. And you know sometimes you hear people say, It’s in their culture, it’s in their history. Liberty’s not something they naturally want or like or desire. Ask them. Usually in my experience, when people have tasted freedom they never want to go back to a life in chains.

The fourth: To be free is to be responsible for the freedom of others. And not just their democratic liberty, but freedom from want, from famine, from poverty and disease. In the work we do in Africa today we’re not just helping government to help people. We’re also saying something fundamentally important about our attitude as part of the free world.

When President Clinton founded the Clinton Global Initiative, which does such wonderful work in Africa, he was making a statement not just of moral conviction but of a belief that those of us who have freedom have a responsibility, a duty imposed, to help others to the same freedoms that we cherish and hold dear.

It cannot be right that a million people die every year, preventably, from malaria. It is our duty to make sure they don’t. And in striving to do that we also strive for liberty.

The fifth lesson: Liberty requires rules. Your Constitution, the courts, the rule of law. Rules that are predictable, fairly applied, not corrupt. And law above government, not government above law.

Sixth: In an era of globalization, where the global community is being made a reality by information and communication and technology, liberty requires that we respect difference. Out in the Middle East, I see every week that I’m there, what conflict based on difference can do. And yet, I know, that in the end whether Jew or Christian or Muslim or Hindu or Sikh or Buddhist or any other faith, there is a common humanity and a common need for what humanity can achieve that unites us. But I want to see a world and will strive for such a world in which people are free to follow their religion without fear or favor, and respect those of a different faith to themselves.

When we, in Kosovo those years ago, acted together, we did so to liberate people who were Muslims from oppression by a government that was of a Christian country. But we didn’t do it because the victims were Muslim or the power oppressing was from a Christian country. We did it because we believed that whatever our faith, whatever our religious creed, we should be equal before God.

And the seventh is liberty needs optimism. You know I met many pessimits in my life and many cynics — and a few commentators. But no one ever achieved anything by being a cynic or a pessimist. When I saw replayed there the old footage of the Northern Ireland peace agreement, apart from the embarrassing fact of the aging process being visible — you didn’t laugh at that actually — being visible for all to see, sometimes people ask me, Well how did that happen and of course it happened because of people like Sen. \[George\] Mitchell, people like President Clinton, the leaders in Northern Ireland, Bertie Ahern. But it also happened because people felt that it could happen. That though the history had been one of conflict and misery and suffering it didn’t have to be like that. That it could indeed change.

And that optimism of the human spirit is what drives progress and indeed what drives liberty too. Cause what is it to be free? Other than in that freedom to be able to see the possibility and the potential of a life lived to the full, of a potential delivered to the full.

So when I receive this medal this evening, I receive it with a great sense of privilege and a deep sense of honor. But I also receive it in the spirit of hope and optimism for the future.

And I will finish with a story about the Northern Ireland peace process, and the extraordinary and indomitable spirit of the Irish nation.

During the course of the peace process, very often we would have a breakdown in negotiations. And we would go away for a few weeks somewhere to iron out our difficulties. And on one of these occasions my wife Cherie was expecting our eldest, our youngest rather, our youngest child Leo, now 10 years old.

And there was one of the Irish delegation that came over to me and said, Your wife is expecting a child. Isn’t that a wonderful thing?

I said, Yes, it is.

He said, what do you think you’ll be calling the child.

I said, Well, I’m not sure but if it’s a boy I’ll call it after my father.

He waid, Well, isn’t that wonderful.

We finished the negotiation, we went away. My wife gave birth. A few months later we come back, we have another one of these negotiations. And I see this guy across the room and he’s got a wonderful suntan. Now I don’t know whether you’ve ever been to Northern Ireland. Great place, but not necessarily the place you’ll get a suntan.

So I say to him, That’s amazing. Where’d you get that suntan?

He said, Well, you’re responsible.

I said, How come I’m responsible?

He said, Well, you know that conversation I had with you and your wife, expecting a child and the name of the child?

I said, yes.

He said, Well, I went down next day and put a thousand pounds at the bookmaker’s on the name of the child. That’s the spirit of optimism that gave us the peace process.

Thank you all very, very much. Indeed, it’s a great pleasure to be here with you. Thank you.