Posted on 06/15/2015 11:46:38 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
MAGNA CARTA, on which King John placed his seal 800 years ago today, is synonymous in the English-speaking world with fundamental rights and the rule of law. It’s been celebrated, and appropriated, by everyone from Tea Party members to Jay Z, who called his latest album “Magna Carta Holy Grail.”
But its fame rests on several myths. First, it wasn’t effective. In fact, it was a failure. John was a weak king who had squandered the royal fortune on a fruitless war with France. Continually raising taxes to pay for his European adventures, he provoked a revolt by his barons, who forced him to sign the charter. But John repudiated the document immediately, and the barons sought to replace him. John avoided that fate by dying.
The next year, his young son reissued Magna Carta, without some of the clauses. It was reissued several times more in the 13th century — the 1297 version is the one on display in the National Archives and embodied in English law. But the original version hardly constrained the monarch.
A second myth is that it was the first document of its type. Writing in 1908, Woodrow Wilson called it the beginning of constitutional government. But in fact, it was only one of many documents from the period, in England and elsewhere, codifying limitations on government power.
A third myth is that the document was a ringing endorsement of liberty. Even a cursory reading reveals a number of oddities. One clause prevents Jews from charging interest on a debt held by an underage heir. Another limits women’s ability to bear witness to certain homicides. A third requires the removal of fish traps from the Thames.
Why, then, is Magna Carta so revered?
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
May that be the fate of all King Johns.
Put the editor and author into a 3rd world country or debtor’s prison for awhile and they may get the idea the the Magna Carta isn’t just words and a pretty good idea of why it was written...
Its the constructing end of things they abhor and are consequently terrible at doing.
This was not an uncommon chain of events during the Plantagenet dynasty.
But let me guess, at the NYT, you would not dare to challenge Karl Marx’s “The Communist Manifesto”.
Because it was version 1.0. Madison and Jefferson’s was a more recent and better version, but the game - Limit the Government - is really the only game in town.
Funny how the nit-pickers like to bring up slavery as the limitation in the original Constitution.
Like future generations aren’t going to criticize us for squinting at the 14th Amendment and seeing some inalienable right to murder your own child in the womb, or for a man to marry another man.
They are going to look at is and say, “Wow, things certainly went downhill from 1789 to 2015. No wonder the US eventually fell apart.”
What a ignoramus! Our laws and our advancement as a western democratized society have derived from the Magna Carta.
Nah, I’d vote for it be decreed they are guilty of sedition and punished accordingly.
Why is the NYT still in existence?
I can’t not agree with that...lol
> They are going to look at is and say, “Wow, things certainly went downhill from 1789 to 2015. No wonder the US eventually fell apart.”
I think you could make that much more accurate by saying “from 2008 to 2015” and saying “really downhill”
I fear that future generations will be taught a warped and incomplete account of our Republic’s demise.
And that the history, contents, and purpose of our Constitution will be heinously misrepresented.
Exactly, it’s like 100 years from now saying Elvis was not successful because no one will be listening to him and he’s dead.
If was up to them, then would bring back in the fraudulent, anti-renascence feudalistic fraud.
I'm sure the New York Times view the Dark Ages as something to admire.
Enough already.
We really need to beat these leftwing statists down before they have us all skulking outside the walls of their palatial estates, rooting around in their trash for our supper.
Because good men did nothing.
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