Editor’s note: This column is
adapted from an address by Noam Chomsky on June 19 at the University of
St. Andrews in Fife, Scotland, as part of its 600th anniversary
celebration.
Recent events
trace a threatening trajectory, sufficiently so that it may be
worthwhile to look ahead a few generations to the millennium anniversary
of one of the great events in the establishment of civil and human
rights: the issuance of Magna Carta, the charter of English liberties
imposed on King John in 1215.
What
we do right now, or fail to do, will determine what kind of world will
greet that anniversary. It is not an attractive prospect – not least
because the Great Charter is being shredded before our eyes.
The
first scholarly edition of the Magna Carta was published in 1759 by the
English jurist William Blackstone, whose work was a source for U.S.
constitutional law. It was entitled “The Great Charter and the Charter
of the Forest,” following earlier practice. Both charters are highly
significant today.
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