Joyner, this monring, strikes a note of alarm as regards anti-terrorism laws being pushed through in the UK and titles his piece:
Britain to Repeal Magna Carta
Oh, please.
OK, look, I, too, have some problems with all of this. That said, I wonder if James isn’t being overly dramatic, here.
At it’s most basic, the argument comes down to this:
The Magna Carta was written on a few assumptions; One of them being the assumption of a moral people being under it. And by moral, I mean in this case, a people all operating within the same moral sphere. John Adams, famously pointed out about our own constitution:
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
This is most certainly a recognition on the part of Adams that our constitution could be used against us by those who were not limited by our morality. I wonder if this situation is simply the result of a recognition that the Magna Carta was similarly restricted.
Are we, after all, talking about a set of principles which are ideally to be applied, or are we talking about a suicide pact?
Addendum;
I’m quite aware that this will generate some disagreement; So be it; such is the nature of political discussion.
In the end, however, this comes down to a question of who we trust more ; the people that we thought enough of to put into office , and their representatives, or a bunch of fourteenth century are rejects who would like to spread their world vision over us? I’m certainly not happy with a reduction of rights, temporary or otherwise . But I consider the chance of the reduction being temporary far greater with our own people calling the shots, then I do with a group of Islamic radicals calling them. Certainly, there have been access is on the part of police and other government officials. While all too frequent, those are the exception, rather than the rule they would be under Islamic law.
And, yes, that is the choice, I think.
Tags: BitsBlog
