“My America”: Bono’s Remarks on Receiving the Liberty Medal

Last Sep­tem­ber 27, 2007, BONO received the Lib­erty Medal for his human­i­tar­ian work in Africa. You can read the news arti­cle here.

In 2006, for­mer pres­i­dents George Bush and Bill Clin­ton won the medal for putting pol­i­tics aside to help raise more than $1 bil­lion for dis­as­ter relief efforts after Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina and the 2004 tsunami in south­east Asia. Pre­vi­ous win­ners have included Afghan Pres­i­dent Hamid Karzai, for­mer U.S. Pres­i­dent Jimmy Carter and U.S. Supreme Court Jus­tice San­dra Day O’Connor.

The LIBERTY MEDAL was first awarded in 1989, and six recip­i­ents have sub­se­quently won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Here is Bono’s COOL Accep­tance Speech:

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President.

I also want to thank Joe Torsella and every­one here at the National Con­sti­tu­tion Cen­ter… what an inspir­ing place… will some­body just let me ring that bell?

No? Come on, now, it’s already cracked.

I want to thank my wife, Ali. And I want to thank the mem­bers of U2 for not fir­ing me when they hear I’m in Philadel­phia this evening and they’re in the stu­dio expect­ing me, and I know they won’t fire me, because it is Philadel­phia and we’ve played every­where here, from 70 peo­ple to 70,000.

And what amaz­ing music we’re hear­ing tonight. A cap­pella — that’s the clos­est to God …the naked voice

I’ve got five min­utes to talk and I could spend ten doing shout-outs. But I just want to thank Ngozi for what she said… More impor­tant, for what she’s done… She’s the kind of leader we all want to work for. Ngozi, we love you.

I must tell you it’s a bit hum­bling for me to be here, where it all got started –where Amer­ica got started — along with a mayor, a gov­er­nor, a for­mer Pres­i­dent and so many oth­ers who have served the cause of freedom.

Whilst I, it must be said, have served the cause of my own ego.

Pres­i­dent Bush: you might remem­ber that, when you were in office in 1992, U2 was tour­ing Amer­ica. And I used to do this bit at every show where I would bring a phone out on stage and ring you up at the White House.

You never took my calls, sir.

You had too much sense, is the truth.

Now your son… did not have your sense.

He not only took my call … he had me over to lunch.

And then I wouldn’t leave.

I think he’s been regret­ting it ever since. Because when I come to the house, I’m not exactly what you call… house-trained or even … White House-trained.

I am not exactly what you’d call a good guest either. I can be rude, to be hon­est. I ask for things, like bil­lions of dol­lars to fight AIDS in Africa. Things like that.
I’d like to think I’ve always left the White House with more than I arrived, and not only bud­get com­mit­ments, but cut­lery, sil­ver­ware… can­de­labras… one or two Bush fam­ily pho­tos… I’ll give them back…

OK, and one Gilbert Stu­art por­trait of George Wash­ing­ton. It was in the bath­room! No one could see it!

I want to say that the cur­rent Pres­i­dent Bush was not only gra­cious, he was pas­sion­ate — pas­sion­ate about doing more for the poor­est of the poor. And smart enough to know that he wasn’t just let­ting a rock star run amok with his staff. He knew that DATA — the orga­ni­za­tion being hon­ored tonight — was burst­ing with energy… filled to the brim with the best and the bright­est pol­icy peo­ple and campaigners…

Still… Peo­ple took a risk to work with us. Peo­ple we wouldn’t have expected had us in their offices again and again to ham­mer out new ini­tia­tives like the Mil­len­nium Chal­lenge Account, which rewarded poor coun­tries that were tack­ling cor­rup­tion with a new kind of start-up money.

We worked with the pres­i­dent on an his­toric AIDS ini­tia­tive where now I can tell you there are one and half mil­lion Africans who owe their lives to the two lit­tle pills a day bought by America.

I might add that this could only hap­pen because in Con­gress, heroic Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans put down their pol­i­tics and put in their polit­i­cal cap­i­tal to make things hap­pen for peo­ple that don’t have a vote.

And it couldn’t have hap­pened with­out the lead­er­ship not just of Pres­i­dent No. 43, but No. 42 as well. I just had the plea­sure of telling William Jef­fer­son Clin­ton that thanks to his and the other G8 lead­ers sup­port­ing debt can­cel­la­tion … and as a result of inspired African lead­er­ship … there are now 20 mil­lion African chil­dren going to school that wouldn’t be oth­er­wise … 20 mil­lion African chil­dren … wow …

That is worth shout­ing about.

This is the Amer­ica I love
This is why I’m so hon­ored to be here to receive this award.
A punk rocker from the north­side of Dublin…
And an orga­ni­za­tion that until recently car­ried its DATA in haver­sacks…
Had its offices in Kinkos ‘round the corner.

I want to honor peo­ple like our insti­ga­tor and part-time flame-thrower, Bobby Shriver… and our bril­liant direc­tor Jamie Drum­mond, who is here tonight. Jamie…

Jamie and I, if you’ve noticed, have accents. We come from over there, across the water, but we’re over here because we’re fans of Amer­ica. In that, we’re no dif­fer­ent than the more than two and a half mil­lion Amer­i­cans who have joined the ONE Campaign…which began its life in this great city of Philadel­phia as recently as 2004… Right in front of Inde­pen­dence Hall.

All of us are fans of America.

I’m also a fan of Ben­jamin Franklin. Franklin, who wore John Lennon glasses before they were cool… Franklin, who went elec­tric before Bob Dylan did…

Franklin, who said this:

“God grant that not only the love of lib­erty but a thor­ough knowl­edge of the rights of man may per­vade all the nations of the earth, so that a philoso­pher may set his foot any­where on its sur­face and say: This is my country.”

Well, in case you hadn’t heard: I am not a philoso­pher. I’m a rock star

Though after a few pints this rock star starts think­ing he’s a philosopher.

No, I’m not a philoso­pher, but let me set my foot here and say to you tonight:

This is my country.

With humil­ity and pride in my own

I say Amer­ica is my coun­try… in the sense that any­one who has a stake in lib­erty has a stake in America.

For all you’ve been through, good and bad, this is my coun­try too.

For every time I wince or gasp or punch the wall, when I read some­thing that galls, there’s another time I am reminded of your great gen­eros­ity, resilience, inno­va­tion, work ethic … your compassion.

Although today — today I read in The Econ­o­mist an arti­cle report­ing that over 38 per­cent of Amer­i­cans sup­port some kind tor­ture in excep­tional circumstances.

My coun­try, no… your coun­try — tell me no.

Today as you pin this great hon­our on me, I ask you … I implore you …
As an Irish man who has seen these things up close, I ask you to remem­ber, you do not have to become a mon­ster to defeat a monster.

Your Amer­ica is bet­ter than that.

Your Amer­ica is the one where Neil Arm­strong takes a walk on the moon
… because he can.

Your Amer­ica is the one where so many Irish peo­ple dis­cov­ered their value.

Your Amer­ica is one where a brave mil­i­tary fought and died for free­dom in places like Omaha Beach and in the Pacific — give it up for pres­i­dent num­ber 41, a true World War II hero.

Your Amer­ica gave Europe the Mar­shall plan
Your Amer­ica gave the World the Peace Corps…

JFK, RFK, and MLK…

The Spe­cial Olympics
Bill and Melinda Gates
War­ren Buffet

Of Dylan and Spring­steen… the Bard and the Boss…

Steve Jobs
Local hero, Will Smith
The med­i­ta­tions of Mark Rothko
The poet­ics of Allen Gins­berg
Edward R. Mur­row
Miles Davis
Quincy Jones
Mary J Blige
Frank Gehry

Of thee I sing. All of thee!

These are the rea­sons I’m a fan of Amer­ica.
And one more: Amer­ica is not just a coun­try; it’s an idea. Isn’t it?

A great and pow­er­ful idea.

The idea that all men are cre­ated equal-that we are endowed by our Cre­ator with cer­tain unalien­able rights, that among these are life, lib­erty, and the pur­suit of happiness.

They’re great lyrics, Mr. Jef­fer­son. Great open­ing riff.

The Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence has a great clos­ing line, too: ‘We mutu­ally pledge to each other our lives, our for­tunes, and our sacred honor.’ The men who made that pledge had a lot to lose by sign­ing that pledge. Like their lives.

What, then, about you and me?

What are we ready to pledge our­selves to? Any­thing? Any­thing at all?

What about this idea of liberty?

Not lib­erty for its own sake but lib­erty for some larger end… not just free­dom from oppres­sion, but free­dom of expres­sion and wor­ship, free­dom from want and from fear.

Because when you’re trapped by poverty, you are not free.

When trade laws pre­vent you from sell­ing the food you grow, you are not free.

When you are dying of a mos­quito bite, for lack of a bed net, you are not free.

When you are hun­gry in a world of plenty, you are not free.

And when you are a monk in Burma this very week, barred from enter­ing a tem­ple because your gospel of peace is an affront to a thug regime…

Well then, none of us are truly free.

My other coun­try, Amer­ica, I know will not stand for that.

Look, I’m not going to stand here-a rock­star who just stepped off a pri­vate plane — and tell you to put your lives on the line for peo­ple you’ve never met. Or your for­tunes. I haven’t.

But our sacred honor might just be at stake here. That, and a whole lot else.

So what, then, are you will­ing to pledge?

How about your sci­ence… Your tech­nol­ogy… Your cre­ativ­ity… Your com­pas­sion… Amer­ica has so many great answers to offer.

We can’t fix all the world’s prob­lems. But the ones we can, we must.

Enough of my voice — lis­ten to the voice of young Africa.

Good­night.

1) Steve Jobs’ Speech to Stan­ford
2) Don’t Believe Your Report Card
3) It Takes Two to Tango