Do you believe in signs from the universe?
This week it was revealed that a long-neglected document held by Harvard University Law School, believed to be a cheap copy of the Magna Carta, is in fact the real document.
More than 700 years ago, the Magna Carta, or Great Charter, established the concept that kings must answer to the law.
The Magna Carta began to articulate the principles central to modern democracies. It established the writ of habeas corpus—a prohibition on unlawful imprisonment—and the concept of the right to trial by jury.
It put into writing that: “No free man shall be seized, imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, exiled or ruined in any way, nor in any way proceeded against, except by the lawful judgement of his peers and the law of the land.”
It also provided that “To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice.”
The Magna Carta placed limits on the king’s ability to tax his subjects and established the law as an authority apart from the king. Anticipating the idea of checks and balances, it set up a council of barons to make sure the king obeyed the charter. If he did not, they could seize his lands and castles until he made amends.
In 1776 American colonists threw off the monarchy to establish a government based on the idea that all people must answer to the law, a concept set forth in the Magna Carta.
As Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense: “in America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.”
In 1776 the new states were writing their own constitutions that defended their liberties, including their protection from loss of life, liberty, or property without due process of the law.
One of the voices of our generation, Bruce Springsteen has no doubts about those rights, embedded in the country’s DNA. At a concert in Manchester, England, he warned: “In America, the richest men… [are]... abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They’re defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideological demands. They’re removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons. This is all happening now.” He criticized lawmakers who have “no…idea of what it means to be deeply American.”
And yet, The Boss told the crowd: “The America that I’ve sung to you about for 50 years is real and, regardless of its faults, is a great country with a great people, so will survive this moment.”
We will. But let’s hope the forces that have brought us so low do not.
Please listen to the signs from the universe. And those from we the people.
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