The Timeless Magna Carta

At First Principles, James R. Stoner talks about how to understand the Magna Carta in our increasingly "post-literate" age. As an aside, I am a little bit uncomfortable with the idea of a "post-literate" age. But most people do little serious reading anymore outside of school or business. Ironically, the most rapid decline in independent serious reading seemed to coincide with the increase in the percentage of people with college degrees in the latter half of the last century. But I believe that most of the people whom we consider to be "leaders" still read books and do other serious reading on their own.

Everyone knows that Magna Carta stands among the headwaters of the great stream of American constitutionalism. Taken out of context, however, it is hard to imagine a political document more incongruent with our world today. Ours is an age of science and technology, eager for fresh discoveries and new gadgets; but Magna Carta invokes established customs and traditions and looks for wisdom in a distant past. Our time is democratic and secular; but Magna Carta was granted by a king at the urging and with the witness of archbishops and bishops, barons and knights. Increasingly our society is “post-literate,” obsessed with song and image and chronicled by video recording; but Magna Carta is a document, repeatedly copied and reissued, whose power was always understood to lie in the written word.

Even in comparison with our own Declaration of Independence, Magna Carta appears out of step. . . .

But it is precisely because Magna Carta has grown strange to us that we have much to learn by becoming reacquainted with it. Its central concern—how to counter the abuse of governmental power with the rule of law—remains a matter of interest to citizens of all political stripes today. Why would we want to ignore a successful response to a problem with which we still must grapple? The character it supposed in the human beings who made it and lived under it can also be inferred from its terms, and there is nothing about human nature that makes such character obsolete. Seeking to learn from Magna Carta teaches us doubly about the value of tradition, for the document itself looks to tradition, and we learn about our own tradition by looking to it.

At Maggie's Farm, The Barrister chooses a quote from the piece above highlighting differences between the American and British with regard to the Magna Carta.

If you are starting to think that there might be some holes in your education, like I did when I read this piece, First Principles offers short courses in Western Civilization.