January 19, 2010 Information Clearing House
What is the greatest human achievement?
Many would answer in terms of some architectural or engineering feat:
The Great Pyramids,
skyscrapers,
a bridge span,
or sending men to the moon.
Others might say the subduing of some deadly disease
or Einstein’s theory of relativity.
The greatest human achievement is the subordination of government to law
This was an English achievement that required eight centuries of struggle, beginning in the ninth century when King Alfred the Great codified the common law, moving forward with the Magna Carta in the thirteenth century and culminating with the Glorious Revolution in the late seventeenth century.
The success of this long struggle made law a shield of the people.
As an English colony, America inherited this unique achievement that made English speaking peoples the most free in the world.
In the first decade of the twenty-first century, this achievement was lost in the United States and, perhaps, in England as well.