Happy Birthday Magna Carta
By Paul Craig Roberts
June 14, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" -
Monday, June 15, 2015, is the 800th
anniversary of Magna Carta. In his book, Magna Carta, J.C. Holt,
professor of medieval history, University of Cambridge, notes that
three of the chapters of this ancient document still stand on the
English Stature Book and that so much of what survives of the Great
Charter is “concerned with individual liberty,” which “is a
reflexion of the quality of the original act of 1215.”
In the 17th century Sir Edward Coke used the Great Charter of the
Liberties to establish the supremacy of Parliament, the
representative of the people, as the origin of law.
A number of legal scholars have made the irrelevant point that the
Magna Carter 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.
At Runnymede in 1215 no one but the armed barons had the power and
audacity to make King John submit to law. The rule of law, not the
rule of the sovereign or of the executive branch in Washington
acceded to by a cowardly and corrupt Congress and Supreme Court, is
a human achievement that grew out of the Magna Carta over the
centuries, with ups and downs of course.
Blackstone’s Commentaries in 1759 fed into the American Revolution
and gave us the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
The Geneva Conventions extended the rule of law to the international
arena.
Beginning with the Clinton Administration and rapidly accelerating
with the
George W. Bush and Obama regimes and Tony Blair in England, the US
and UK governments have run roughshod over their accountability to
law.
Both the US and UK in the 21st century have gone to numerous wars
illegally under the Nuremberg Standard established by the US and UK
following Germany’s defeat in WWII and used to execute Germans for
war crimes. The US and UK claim that unlike Germany they are immune
to the very international law that they themselves established in
order to punish the defeated Germans. Washington and London can bomb
and murder at will, but not Germany.
Both governments illegally and unconstitutionally (the UK
Constitution is unwritten) spy on their citizens, and the Bush and
Obama executive branches, have eviscerated, with the complicity of
Congress and the federal courts, the entirely of the US Constitution
except for the Second Amendment, which is protected by the strong
lobby of the National Rifle Association. If the gun control
“progressives” have their way, nothing will be left of the US
Constitution.
Washington and its European satellites have subordinated law to a
political and economic hegemonic agenda. Just as under the heyday of
colonialism when the West looted the non-white world, today the West
loots its own. Greece is being looted as was Ireland, and Italy and
Spain will not escape looting unless they renege on their debts and
leave the EU.
Western capitalism is a looting mechanism. It loots labor. It loots
the environment, and with the transpacific and transatlantic
“partnerships” it will loot the sovereign law of countries. For
example, France’s laws against
GMOs become “restraints on trade” and subjects France to punitive
law suits by Monsanto. If France doesn’t pay Monsanto the damages
Monsanto claims, France is subject to punitive sanctions like
Washington applies to Russia when Russia doesn’t do what Washington
wants.
A new slave existence is being created in front of our eyes as law
ceases to be a shield of peoples and becomes a weapon in the hands
of government. Eight hundred years of reform is being overturned as
Washington and its vassals invade, bomb, and overthrow governments
that are out of step with Washington’s agenda. Formerly
self-sufficient agricultural communities are becoming wage slaves
for international agribusiness corporations. Everywhere privilege is
rising above law and justice is being lost.
The concentration of wealth and power is reminiscent of the
aristocratic era and of Rome under the Caesars. The demise of the
rule of law has stripped ordinary people of security and dignity.
Peoples of the world must protect themselves by acting in defense of
the Great Charter’s principle that governments are accountable to
law. Governments unaccountable to law are tyrannies whatever they
might call themselves, no matter how exceptional and indispensable
they declare themselves to be.
Monday in Westminster in London, the International Tribunal for
Natural Justice is forming. If my understanding of this work of
Humanitad is correct, we have a cause for hope. Perhaps the Tribunal
will try the criminals of our time, almost all of which are
“leaders” of Western governments, on the Internet with juries and
prosecutors so that populations everywhere can witness the evil that
every Western government represents.
Once the West is perceived as the evil force that it is, it will
have to reform and again embrace Edward Coke’s vision of the Great
Charter or become an unimportant backwater while the rest of the
world goes on to better things. The world is saved once the world
ceases to bow down to the American Caesar.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury
for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal.
He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and
Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His
internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts'
latest books are
The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and
Economic Dissolution of the West
and
How America Was Lost.
