|
When it comes to the Magna Carta, history neglects to mention what King John did (or tried to do) to the signers - and everyone else he could get his hands on who thought a piece of parchment to be a viable constraint on unbridled tyranny. It wasn't until after John's death that the myth we accept as the Magna Carta gained stature - at the point of a sword in the hands of an armed gentry who seized upon the weakness of a 10 year old king and the complicity of a Roman Pope. Without willing arms to enforce its provisions, the Magna Carta would have been a forgotten footnote in English history. Even then its provisions generally only applied for the gentry. Add that throughout history English kings continued to view it much as our current administration views our own Constitution - an impediment to the natural exercise of their "divine rights". The takeaway from this brief lesson? - The coin paid to enforce words on parchment is blood; tyrants will not be stopped with anything less dear.
__________________
A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero (42B.C)
|