Our 800 years of British inheritance

We owe our liberty, legal system and democracy to 800+ years of British legal inheritance dating back to Magna Carta in 1225 (first edition 1215). While "we" encompasses principally nations that were once part of the British Empire, it also includes those whose politics and laws have been heavily influenced by British notions of liberty and democracy (eg. France, Germany, Japan) - in other words it’s pretty much everyone on the planet who currently lives in a functioning free and democratic society.

A couple of books

The British struggle was enormous and it was not by any means a sure thing that it would be successful. To get a feel for the magnitude and significance of that struggle John Robson recommended two books:

"The Magna Carta: A Brief History of" by Geoffrey Hindley sets the scene with descriptions of British society circa 1200, the system of governance (mainly feudal tyranny) and the main players (the king and the barony) leading to Magna Carta in which the King John I recognized, in writing, the natural rights of the barons (and all freemen) and limitations on the royal prerogative.

"The Lion and the Throne" by Catherine Drinker Bowen. Magna Carta being just the documented beginning, there was inevitable push-back by subsequent monarchs. This book picks up the story 400 years later and covers the life and times of Edward Coke during the reigns of Elizabeth I, James I and Charles I. Along with his perilous run-ins with the monarchy (once imprisoned on charges of treason) fighting to keep hard won liberties, Coke is famous for the 1628 Petition of Right (reaffirming and updating rights recognized by the Magna Carta) and for his meticulous documentation of case-law (he was the most cited source for another 200 years). It’s a fascinating story including tales of Francis Bacon (a Coke rival and foe), Walter Raleigh (beheaded) and Guy Fawkes (his gunpowder plot, trial and gruesome execution).

Both books together drive home the significance of the monumental, centuries long effort to achieve the liberties we enjoy today. It’s history that should be a mandatory part of high school curriculum - but probably isn't. My recollection of my own high school ‘education’ on this subject is that it consisted of a few short sentences about Magna Carta from a text on British history; and, the answer to the exam question, if there were one, would have been the name of the event and its date.

Who cares?

The British contribution to liberty is appreciated to varying degrees around the world. Based on explicitly and publicly expressed reverence for it the list would run, in order of appreciation: Great Britain (though it has apparently slipped in recent decades), America followed by a few Commonwealth countries.

Of the 17 copies of the Magna Carta surviving from the 13^th century only two are held outside England - one in Washington DC and one in Canberra, Australia. British concepts of liberty figure prominently in the creation of American constitution and legal system and Americans readily acknowledge and honour their significance (eg. the American Bar Association erected The Magna Carta Memorial at Runnymede, England).

Canada ... not so much. Except perhaps in the legal profession there seems to be little more than lip-service paid to the origins of our liberties. We got ours in 1982, from Pierre Trudeau, in his Charter of Rights and Freedoms, didn’t you know?

Disgusting: David Suzuki and NFB indoctrinating school kids

Yesterday and today the National Film Board and David Suzuki were given exclusive access to thousands of school kids across Canada to spread Suzuki's radical environmental and political propaganda:

As many as 12,000 Canadian high school students and their teachers will have real-time access to renowned scientist Dr. David Suzuki on November 1 and 2 through a new virtual classroom experience. The virtual program is being delivered through a partnership between the National Film Board of Canada and the David Suzuki Foundation....

Ezra Levant featured video clips of the Suzuki 'education' session on The Source today.  Suzuki openly stated that he is deliberately targeting impressionable young students because (paraphrasing) 'their dimwitted, dinosaur parents aren't getting the message'.

This is a disgusting travesty!  The schools that permitted this one-sided, dishonest, hypocritical indoctrination should be ashamed of themselves.  They should be raked over the coals and forced to apologize to parents and students alike, not to mention to taxpayers who fund the NFB.

Remember the Alamo!

The Mexicans are winning:

Students in a Texas public high school were made to stand up and recite the Mexican national anthem and Mexican pledge of allegiance....

"We Day"

In Vancouver yesterday:

... Some 18,000 students ...[at]Vancouver’s Rogers Arena Thursday.

... "we are building a school in Haiti...” said Jacob Gebrewold, ... one of those youth, ... 15, a Grade 11 student at Port Moody secondary. Gebrewold, who was attending his second We Day...
“... my parents are from Ethiopia and there’s a huge Ethiopian community here in British Columbia,” he said. And they’ve raised me and inspired me to believe in the fact that I am as big a part of the change as any senator, any lawyer, any president.

... a range of speakers and entertainers from former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to NBA all-star Shaquille O’Neal, actress and activist Mia Farrow, the band Hedley, former child soldier Michel Chikwanine and others. [What?! GW Bush wasn't invited!]

Well it’s nice to see that kids are being encouraged to help the less fortunate. But that comes off as “the biggest part of ‘We’ is 'Me'" - exactly what we might expect from the narcissistic self-esteem generation. Young Jacob doesn’t seem to get that “senators”, “lawyers” and “presidents” may have done something to earn their status and positions of influence. Participating in “We” fests may be a start in that direction but no more than a start.

It would be more encouraging if we had some confidence that these students were getting a good grounding in the knowledge and skills needed for them to understand the real world and how it is that they came to be in such a privileged position, to be able to afford to help with “building a school in Haiti”. However, I expect they’re getting more “social justice” indoctrination - in the evils of racist, white, Western colonialism and capitalism - than anything.  Look for them to be participating in tomorrow's "Occupy Vancouver" day.

Bias? What bias?

The New York Times has published an article by John Tierney about liberal bias in academia which attempts to answer the question "why are conservatives such a minority at so many graduate schools?" Here's an excerpt:

“The most effective way to keep out a whole class of people who are unwelcome isn’t to bar entry, but to make sure that very few in that class will want to enter,” Dr. Wood wrote. “If it comes down to it, entry can still be impeded through other techniques, the feminist and the multiculturalist vetoes on the faculty search committee being the deadliest as far as conservatives go, although there are others.”

Republican scholars are more likely than Democrats to end up working outside academia, as documented by Daniel Klein, an economist at George Mason University. Dr. Klein, who calls himself a classical liberal (a k a libertarian), says that the university promotes groupthink because its system of “departmental majoritarianism” empowers the dominant faction to keep hiring like-minded colleagues. And when a faculty committee is looking to hire or award tenure, political ideology seems to make a difference, according to a “collegiality survey” conducted by George Yancey.

Dr. Yancey, a professor of sociology at the University of North Texas, asked more than 400 sociologists which nonacademic factors might influence their willingness to vote for hiring a new colleague. You might expect professors to at least claim to be immune to bias in academic hiring decisions.

But as Dr. Yancey reports in his new book, “Compromising Scholarship: Religious and Political Bias in American Higher Education,” more than a quarter of the sociologists said they would be swayed favorably toward a Democrat or an A.C.L.U. member and unfavorably toward a Republican. About 40 percent said they would be less inclined to vote for hiring someone who belonged to the National Rifle Association or who was an evangelical. Similar results were obtained in a subsequent survey of professors in other social sciences and the humanities.

Dr. Yancey, who describes himself as a political independent with traditional Christian beliefs and progressive social values, advises nonliberal graduate students to be discreet during job interviews. “The information in this research,” he wrote, “indicates that revealing one’s political and religious conservatism will, on average, negatively influence about half of the search committee one is attempting to impress.”

Most academics claim to be politically unbiased, but it's a moot point when the academic environment at graduate schools is subtly hostile to conservatives and the pool of graduate students self-selects for liberals.