If you Live in Freedom, Thank the British Empire

[Forty Two]

Scot Dutchy isn't going to be happy about this..

Dutch freedom is best freedom!

[Forty Two]

Where was he when he was shot? Opening a railway station on the line being built between Berlin and Bhagdad. The Americans couldn't let that happen.

.... err... the Americans caused World War 1 because they were behind the shooting of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary in 1914 by a team of Serbian nationalists whose goal was to sever part of Serbia from the Austro-Hungarian Empire in order to form a Yugoslavian nation?

And, the theory is that the Americans couldn't let a railway station be built on the line between Berlin and Baghdad because of oil shipments from Iraq (not discovered until the mid-1920s...)?

[Svartalf]

Scot Dutchy isn't going to be happy about this..

Dutch freedom is best freedom!

dunno. I thought they lived in a 1984esque world of omnipresent gummint control?

[Forty Two]

The problem was the interlinked treaties that required allies to pile in and support each other. What utter stupidity.

As the the OP I think the key is the rule of law. England was the first country, as far as I am aware anyway, where even the sovereign was subject to the law and in theory all were equal before it. Much follows from that.

Indeed, while "all" is a bit of an overstatement, conceptually that's accurate. It goes back to Magna Carta Liberatum, which is an embodiment of English common law, which is based on concepts growing out of Anglo-Saxon common law. It goes forward to the Glorious Revolution and the English Bill of Rights, etc.

[Forty Two]

PragerU...

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Dennis_Prager

May as well link to an Infowars video...

The point of posting it was to critique it. To oppose it.

[Forty Two]

"The British always thought of themselves as liberators, as bringers of freedom. The British believed the final and necessary justification of their empire was a moral one." (1:00-1:12)
Can anyone tell me what planet H.W. Crocker III hails from? Or from what century?

That's a good item to look at there. I think it's hard to justify an argument that the British thought their empire was an exercise in benevolence and a moral imperative to bring "freedom." I would suggest that Kipling's White Man's Burden is closer to the mark. Empire was a duty, not to bring freedom, but to bring civilization.

The clip was not a total waste of time, though. I had to laugh when Crocker told the anecdote of the British PM, Lloyd George, lecturing the Irish that there was no word for "republic" in the Celtic language until the English gave it to them. The funny bit was that Crocker forgot to mention that the English never had a word for it either until the Romans told them what "res publica" means.

In all fairness, the Romans never told the English anything, as Rome was long gone centuries before there was an Englishman to talk to.

That was almost as funny as the myth of some American president claiming that the French had no word for "entrepreneur".

That's fake. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/french-lesson/

And yes, this PragerU offering is no better than anything Infowars comes up with.

It was offered expressly to discuss and critique. Nothing wrong with doing that with any argument posed by any person. It's not an endorsement of the source to discuss the matter. For the record, I'm no fan of Dennis Prager - he's a religious conservative and a social conservative.

[Hermit]

As the the OP I think the key is the rule of law. England was the first country, as far as I am aware anyway, where even the sovereign was subject to the law and in theory all were equal before it. Much follows from that.

Maybe you forgot about the codices of Hammurabi, Pericles and others that preceded the Great Charter of the Liberties. As for the Magna Carta, this hallowed document was one of many agreements dressed up as being about rights and liberties, when in fact it simply documented the outcome of one party in a power struggle with another. King John not so much agreed to liberties as conceded defeat. neither he nor the winners, the nobility, gave a solitary fuck about rights and liberties of 99% of the population. Not only that, but even the hard won rights and liberties were torn up whenever that was possible. The heads of plenty of nobles rolled during the reigns of the Plantagenet, Lancaster, Tudor and Stuart monarchs, at least until Charles I's own head was severed from the rest of his body in turn well over four centuries later.

[Rum]

The Norman barons were brutish thugs without doubt and John was more or less dragged kicking and screaming to a reduction in his absolute authority. Such ‘deals’ were always about power of course and rarely if ever about the rights of the humble peasant.

The ‘rule of law’ as a modern concept is maybe a bit more recent. John Locke in 1690 suggested the following:

‘The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule. The liberty of man, in society, is to be under no other legislative power, but that established, by consent, in the commonwealth; nor under the dominion of any will, or restraint of any law, but what that legislative shall enact, according to the trust put in it. Freedom then is not....a liberty for every one to do what he lists, to live as he pleases, and not to be tied by any laws: but freedom of men under government is, to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, where the rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man: as freedom of nature is, to be under no other restraint but the law of nature’.

[Hermit]

The clip was not a total waste of time, though. I had to laugh when Crocker told the anecdote of the British PM, Lloyd George, lecturing the Irish that there was no word for "republic" in the Celtic language until the English gave it to them. The funny bit was that Crocker forgot to mention that the English never had a word for it either until the Romans told them what "res publica" means.

In all fairness, the Romans never told the English anything, as Rome was long gone centuries before there was an Englishman to talk to.

The English existed during Roman times in the exact same way the Celts did when, according to Lloyd George, the English transmitted that word/concept in turn.

That was almost as funny as the myth of some American president claiming that the French had no word for "entrepreneur".

That's fake. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/french-lesson/

Which is why I referred to it as a myth.

[Forty Two]

The clip was not a total waste of time, though. I had to laugh when Crocker told the anecdote of the British PM, Lloyd George, lecturing the Irish that there was no word for "republic" in the Celtic language until the English gave it to them. The funny bit was that Crocker forgot to mention that the English never had a word for it either until the Romans told them what "res publica" means.

In all fairness, the Romans never told the English anything, as Rome was long gone centuries before there was an Englishman to talk to.

The English existed during Roman times in the exact same way the Celts did when, according to Lloyd George, the English transmitted that word/concept in turn.

They weren't English. When Rome ruled Britannia there were Celtish tribes there, but they were not English. The Angles settled in England post-Roman. Angles...Angland... England.

That was almost as funny as the myth of some American president claiming that the French had no word for "entrepreneur".

That's fake. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/french-lesson/

Which is why I referred to it as a myth.

Good point. My bad.

[Brian Peacock]

Where was he when he was shot? Opening a railway station on the line being built between Berlin and Bhagdad. The Americans couldn't let that happen.

.... err... the Americans caused World War 1 because they were behind the shooting of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary in 1914 by a team of Serbian nationalists whose goal was to sever part of Serbia from the Austro-Hungarian Empire in order to form a Yugoslavian nation?

And, the theory is that the Americans couldn't let a railway station be built on the line between Berlin and Baghdad because of oil shipments from Iraq (not discovered until the mid-1920s...)?

No.

[Forty Two]

Well, that explains it.

[Hermit]

The Norman barons were brutish thugs without doubt and John was more or less dragged kicking and screaming to a reduction in his absolute authority. Such ‘deals’ were always about power of course and rarely if ever about the rights of the humble peasant.

The ‘rule of law’ as a modern concept is maybe a bit more recent. John Locke in 1690 suggested the following:

‘The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule. The liberty of man, in society, is to be under no other legislative power, but that established, by consent, in the commonwealth; nor under the dominion of any will, or restraint of any law, but what that legislative shall enact, according to the trust put in it. Freedom then is not....a liberty for every one to do what he lists, to live as he pleases, and not to be tied by any laws: but freedom of men under government is, to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, where the rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man: as freedom of nature is, to be under no other restraint but the law of nature’.

OK, having moved away from the Magna Carta as the foundation of the rule of law, let's have a brief look at Locke.

"The liberty of man, in society, is to be under no other legislative power, but that established, by consent, in the commonwealth" That's an excellent start until we look at who it is that this liberty applies to. The most obvious limitation is "man". Women are excluded. This he takes for granted - just like everybody else at the time - to the extent that it does not even require as much as a mention.

Next is the matter of property (of which women are a part of). While everyone is entitled to acquire property, which is indeed a significant expansion of rights and liberties compared to the feudal compact, only men of property (meaning ownership of real estate) have the right to vote and the liberties thus gained. Locke turns out to be not so much an advocate of some universal rule of law, but a participant in a new power struggle - the fight between feudal and capitalist society - and he fought on the side of the latter, the incipient bourgeoisie. The vast majority of the population, rural labourers, artisans and the as yet hardly existing factory workers was excluded once again.

So, yes, once more high-faluting, decorative phrases using words like "freedom", "liberty" and later on "equality" look good, but in the end they only serve to disguise the fact that everything is ultimately about power struggles. At least Marx was honest about that when he proposed the next step to be the dictatorship of the proletariat, which he said can only be brought about by a class war.

[Rum]

I tend to agree. ‘Rights’ have rarely been given away - though I do think idealism can be overlooked as a force in history.

[Hermit]

The clip was not a total waste of time, though. I had to laugh when Crocker told the anecdote of the British PM, Lloyd George, lecturing the Irish that there was no word for "republic" in the Celtic language until the English gave it to them. The funny bit was that Crocker forgot to mention that the English never had a word for it either until the Romans told them what "res publica" means.

In all fairness, the Romans never told the English anything, as Rome was long gone centuries before there was an Englishman to talk to.

The English existed during Roman times in the exact same way the Celts did when, according to Lloyd George, the English transmitted that word/concept in turn.

They weren't English. When Rome ruled Britannia there were Celtish tribes there, but they were not English. The Angles settled in England post-Roman. Angles...Angland... England.

You're being silly now. Of course England has been partially or completely overrun several times. Nevertheless, the fact remains that what are regarded as "the English" today passed on what their predecessors learnt from the Romans. Or are you trying to convince me that "republic"/"res publica" was a word or concept invented by the Angles?