(Tom Palmer.)
Tom provided a brief but detailed exploration of how people in the past fought for their freedom. A sixteen page paper accompanies his presentation and it is not possible to summarize 4500 years of history here. I will not attempt to provide a summary, but I will just highlight a few points.
There are two pre-conditions for individually liberty and constitutionally limited government:
- The existence of a “higher law” whether expressed in terms of a transcendent God or access to an objective reality that is not dependant on perceptions (e.g. the understanding that fire burns in all circumstances).
- An appreciation that laws can be discovered and is not merely the expression of will by the ruler.
Freedom started with a struggle to counter the might of an oppressor. Freedom is not about obliterating one power in favour of another, but it is most usually about balancing one power with another (i.e. creating a mechanism for check and balance)
Note to self: The two pre-conditions allow for the acceptance that a set of “higher law” does exist and cannot be changed. Thus, what is from God should not be changed, but we are free to “discover” new laws that were not explicitly prescribed.
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