magna carta

Debunking Magna Carta Leads Back To Serfdom

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magna cartaPaul Craig Roberts – In my column for the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/06/12/happy-birthday-magna-carta-paul-craig-roberts/, I wrote: “A number of legal scholars have made the irrelevant point that the Magna Carta protected rights of the Church, nobles, and free men who were not enserfed, a small percentage of the population in the early 13th century. We hear the same about the US Constitution–it was something the rich did for themselves. I have no sympathy for debunking human achievements that, in the end, gave ordinary people liberty.”

My celebration of this document was reposted today on a number of websites including as far away as Hong Kong. But the New York Times and a dolt of a law professor at the University of Chicago named Tom Ginsburg chose to debunk the Magna Carta on its 800th anniversary. “Stop Revering Magna Carta,” Ginsburg tells us. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/15/opinion/stop-revering-magna-carta.html

Ginsburg alleges that the Magna Carta “wasn’t effective. In fact, it was a failure.” The law professor maintains that Magna Carta’s fame rests on myths, not on reality.

What absolute nonsense. In this age of American Caesars, we need to celebrate the Magna Carta, not debunk it. Continue reading →

Magna Carta: Celebrating 800 Years Of Not Being Free

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Magna CartaSimon Black – In the history of post-Norman monarchs in the UK there have been nine Henrys. Eight Edwards. Four Williams. Four Georges. And three Richards.

Yet there was only one John.

In fact, in nearly 1,000 years since William the Conqueror took England in 1066, John was the only King to never have his name repeated.

And with reason. He wasn’t exactly a popular guy, widely despised by his people and nobles alike.

John constantly taxed and plundered his subjects to finance pointless wars abroad. He extorted them with ever-increasing fines and imprisoned people for absurd, victimless crimes.

He used his local police (sheriffs) to confiscate private property under threat of violence, building them into the most feared and powerful force in the kingdom.

According to Harry Buffardi’s book “The History of the Office of the Sheriff”, King John deliberately selected “men of harsh demeanor for the post”.

(Does any of this sound familiar?)

The historical evidence suggests that John was so hated that he was assassinated by poison; Shakespeare dramatizes this episode in his little known play King John, which contains the most wonderful death line “[N]ow my soul hath elbow-room. . .”

Before he departed this earth, however, King John was forced to make certain concessions to the nobles who had waged all-out rebellion against him.

After taking London, the rebel barons met John to formalize these concessions at a picturesque riverside meadow called Runnymede, not far from Heathrow airport.

The contract they hammered out on June 15, 1215 (which is actually June 22nd in our modern calendar) contained a list of rights and privileges that eventually became known as Magna Carta.

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The Magna Carta

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On June 15, in the year 1215 AD, the King of England was an involuntary “guest” of a group of forty rather angry Barons in a field at Runnymede. After the Barons explained “the facts of life” to him, King John affixed his Seal to a document they called the Magna Carta. In those days, documents were not signed, as is the custom today. Instead of a signature, the official Seal of the person “signing” was impressed into hot wax poured onto the document.

King John consented to the Baron’s demands, sealing the document in hope of averting a civil war. Ten weeks later, Pope Innocent III proclaimed the Magna Carta document null and void, plunging England into a civil war the King and Barons had hoped to avoid. Fortunately, for posterity and the law, King John died before Pope Innocent III’s decree became law. He died only 15 months after sealing the Magna Carta.

Although this magnificent document did not solve King John’s immediate problems, it was reissued in multiple copies after his death, and was read to the people throughout England. In fact, when the first English settlers landed on the shores of Colonies around the world, they took their rights with them.

Years later, when the American Colonies decided to break away from control by England, the writers of the Declaration of Independenceand new Constitution had the rights first enumerated in the Magna Carta very much in mind.

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Ron Paul ~ The 5 Threats To Freedom [Video]

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TruthNeverTold | November 18 2012

What a wonderful world it would be if everyone accepted the simple moral premise of rejecting all acts of aggression. The retort to such a suggestion is always: it’s too simplistic, too idealistic, impractical, naïve, utopian, dangerous, and unrealistic to strive for such an ideal.

The answer to that is that for thousands of years the acceptance of government force, to rule over the people, at the sacrifice of liberty, was considered moral and the only available option for achieving peace and prosperity.

What could be more utopian than that myth — considering the results especially looking at the state sponsored killing, by nearly every government during the 20th Century, estimated to be in the hundreds of millions. It’s time to reconsider this grant of authority to the state.

No good has ever come from granting monopoly power to the state to use aggression against the people to arbitrarily mold human behavior. Such power, when left unchecked, becomes the seed of an ugly tyranny. This method of governance has been adequately tested, and the results are in: reality dictates we try liberty.

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