The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Magna Carta and Alvin Bragg

Posted on | April 8, 2023 | 1 Comment

King John signs Magna Carta, 1215

“The failure of our education system to teach America’s young people their own history,” I wrote nearly four years ago, “is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that almost no one under 40 today knows anything about Sam Adams except as a popular brand of beer.” And many have suspected that this historical ignorance is not accidental, but rather that the dumbing-down of American education serves a specific political agenda, as those who are conscious of the pedigree of their liberty are apt to be more zealous in defense of their rights. Our liberties were “purchased . . . with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood,” Sam Adams declared in 1771, and thus Americans should never allow themselves to be cheated out of their inheritance.

By the time of our War of Independence, Englishmen had been fighting to establish and defend their rights for more than 500 years, dating back at least as far as Runnymede in 1215, and even further back to Henry I’s Charter of Liberties in 1100. The right to trial by jury, an institution originally unique to the English, is guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment. Americans are prone to take this inheritance for granted, along with all the other rights specified in the Bill of Rights, including those summarized in the Fifth Amendment by the phrase “due process of law.”

The writer known as “Wolf Howling” observes:

Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s indictment of Donald Trump is a Constitutional obscenity. Bragg has crafted an indictment that denies Trump his most fundamental constitutional right, to know the criminal charges against him. That is a right with a 1,000 year old pedigree in English and American law.

(Hat-tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.) The lowliest thief incarcerated at Riker’s Island cannot be denied such rights, and what Bragg has done in framing this indictment of Trump is an insult to every American, an attempt to defraud them of their ancient liberties, purchased by “toil and danger” and bequeathed to us as an inheritance. However ignorant Alvin Bragg may be, we cannot suppose that he is violating these rights accidentally, and thus he must be considered an enemy of justice, deliberately seeking to destroy liberty. That the voters of New York City elected Bragg to this office, and apparently support him in his unconstitutional actions, says a lot about the nature of “democracy” in 21st-century America. People need to wake up to the danger.



 

 

Category: Constitution, Donald Trump, History

Comments

One Response to “Magna Carta and Alvin Bragg”

  1. News of the Week (April 9th, 2023) | The Political Hat
    April 13th, 2023 @ 4:33 am

    […] Magna Carta and Alvin Bragg “The failure of our education system to teach America’s young people their own history,” I wrote nearly four years ago, “is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that almost no one under 40 today knows anything about Sam Adams except as a popular brand of beer.” And many have suspected that this historical ignorance is not accidental, but rather that the dumbing-down of American education serves a specific political agenda, as those who are conscious of the pedigree of their liberty are apt to be more zealous in defense of their rights. Our liberties were “purchased . . . with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood,” Sam Adams declared in 1771, and thus Americans should never allow themselves to be cheated out of their inheritance. […]