Posted on 06/12/2015 5:20:04 AM PDT by Kaslin
What sometimes seem like epic battles to reshape the world generally fade to irrelevance very quickly. To take just one recent example, 20 years ago the Justice Department was trying to break up Microsoft because the software giant was perceived as too powerful to be challenged by other firms. Today, of course, all the talk is of Google and Apple with Microsoft struggling to find a niche.
Only a few events and documents -- like the American Declaration of Independence -- are worthy of celebrating even a century or two later.
On Monday, June 15, the Magna Carta turns 800, and it is worthy of great celebration by freedom-loving people everywhere. This is the document that brought about a fundamental rethinking of the relationship between a king and his subjects. Up until that point, English Kings were the law. They could decide who lived and who died and take whatever they wanted.
The Magna Carta changed all that. It established the idea that there is a law that even kings and governments must obey. There could be no taxation without representation and no arbitrary taking of personal property by the government. In short, the Magna Carta was the starting point for all the "unalienable" rights that we now enjoy and led directly over time to our Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. In many ways, it was the cornerstone for the idea that we now describe as freedom.
Daniel Hannan is a British member the European Parliament whose district includes Runnymede, the place where the Great Charter was negotiated. He describes the Magna Carta as the "most important bargain in the history of the human race." That's a big claim, but it's hard to argue with him. His book, "Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World" backs it up.
Still, despite the enormous impact the Magna Carta has had, there has been decidedly little recognition from official sources. The American Bar Association was the first to place a memorial stone at Runnymede. They did so in 1957 -- more than seven centuries after the fact. This year, due to the efforts of Mr. Hannan and others, there will finally be a British acknowledgement of the fact. A statue of Queen Elizabeth II has been erected.
Also this year, President Obama signed a proclamation urging Americans to celebrate this historic event. But there has been little enthusiasm among the political class for such a celebration.
It doesn't take much of an imagination to understand the reluctance of government leaders to give the Magna Carta the recognition it deserves. The document is first and foremost about placing limits upon political leaders and government to do as they please. It enshrines the notion that society should be governed from the bottom up rather than from the top down.
Perhaps the greatest tribute that can be offered on the 800th birthday of the Magna Carta is that it is still relevant today despite the fact that governments have been trying to ignore it for all these years.
Happy Birthday, Magna Carta.
Perhaps the HOR should wait until June 15 to vote to relinquish even more of our freedom and independence.
Yeah, I remember the good ol' days when our U.S. Constitution did the same thing.
—Also this year, President Obama signed a proclamation urging Americans to celebrate this historic event.—
I find this puzzling, to say the least. Why would a someone like 0 want to call attention to a document like the Magna Carta?
He trashes the Constitution. He sees himself as King.
Maybe it’s all part of the charade.
In before the “I have an ancestor who signed that” posts.
LOL
To die so young is a shame.
The WSJ had a great article which I posted a week or so earlier....
Well worth finding and reading if interested....
A Piece of Paper?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvB_qGhyg_k
It’s impressive that freedom lasted 800 years, growing for most of that time, before Americans elected Obama to reverse the trend. I have to admire Obama’s success in that respect. I think of him as lazy and stupid, but he changed the course of history in ways that I would not have imagined possible.
I have worked with recent graduates of a local university who majored in HISTORY but did not recognize the name “Magna Carta”! I count that about the same as a math major who cannot add two plus two correctly.
“Maybe it’s all part of the charade.”
Of course it is, no tyrant describes himself as a tyrant now, they all claim to be devoted to serving the people. Even those who are the polar opposite of Obama often have trouble admitting how freedom has been destroyed in this country. You can still hear an occasional reference to, “All the great freedoms we enjoy in America.”
News Flash Folks, we don’t enjoy all those great freedoms anymore, the only reason we enjoy any at all is that it is impossible with current technology to enforce all the absurd laws that have been passed. If it were possible to do so we would all be aware that in many cases you cannot abide by one law for breaking another. Real freedom is long gone, now we have only the freedom of the outlaw because we are all outlaws whether it is realized or not. Anyone who still imagines that it is possible to be a law abiding citizen is simply living in a fantasy and at the current rate very soon it will no longer be possible for a conscious person to indulge that fantasy.
My father taught undergraduate and graduate business at a university after he retired from the Army. He had many students during his 10 year tenure who could not spell “business.”
Thanks, teachers unions.
The MC is taught as an example of heteronormative, upper class, white male privilege, not the beginnings of rulers sharing power with constituents. Obama would never go for that! LOL!
Note that the weakness of King John (the worst in English history) allowed barons to force him into signing the MC. It provided more representation only for the aristocracy, but it was a beginning.
True democrats would be trying to force Obama into signing a modern day MC, limiting the scope of the Executive branch and the federal government. He is our weakest POTUS ever, held up only by his media and crony capitalist allies.
Awesome - thank you!
And the most absurd part of it is most of his help comes from the supposedly “opposition” party.
But the GOPe is opposition in name only.
May history show they sold their souls for little more than hollow promises and pipe dreams of power.
Your analogy is inverted. King John was sovereign of England. We The People are the sovereign of America.
It is up to us to reassert sovereignty over the usurpers in DC, and not for the usurpers to grant the people rights or powers.
Article V before we can't.
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