Richard Boucher: The Pilgrims' voyage was about freedom

From a Thanksgiving speech by the US State Department Spokesman to the Pilgrims Society, given at Mansion House, London

I understand there are people in England besides you who celebrate Thanksgiving. They do it in their own way, and a little earlier – 6 September, the day the Pilgrims finally left England. The Pilgrims and England were not on the best of terms when the Mayflower set sail. Fortunately, our nations moved past that point, and today we are strong partners, allies, and friends.

Our relationship proves an old axiom – children cannot really appreciate their parents until they move out of the house. Our relationship is also strong because our nations developed and remain today bound together by certain principles. In a farewell letter to the Pilgrims, their pastor John Robinson alluded to some of these principles. He talked about the Pilgrims becoming a "body politic" with a civil government, choosing their governors themselves.

The Pilgrims' voyage was about breaking the shackles of intolerance. It was about cleaving to the ideals held in self governance and the rule of law. Simply put, the Pilgrims' voyage was about freedom. And freedom is the foremost principle that binds together America and Great Britain. Freedom makes us strong.

I declare myself an unabashed, simplistic American. I believe in freedom as a right, a responsibility, a destiny, a force that cannot be vanquished. And, in my line of work, it is more than a faith – freedom is a foreign policy.

The United States will defend freedom relentlessly. But fighting for freedom does not always come in the context of war, bombs, or suffering. In this age, it has an enormously wonderful, enormously positive aspect as well: expanding the community of freedom.

You may be tired of hearing me talk about freedom – I'll stop soon. But being that unabashed, simplistic American, to me that is what it is all about – plain and simple. The United States stands for freedom, defends freedom, advances freedom, and enlarges the community of freedom because we think it is the right thing to do.