The viruses of tyranny and stupidity

Vincent J. Curtis

24 Mar 20

If progressives were serious about maintaining social distancing, they would recommend the smoking of cigars.

The viruses of tyranny and stupidity have deeply infected today’s progressives.  We have progressives who recommend the emptying of our jails to protect the prisoners from the coronavirus, and Minister of Health Hajdu who wants to throw people into jail for violating her orders to maintain social distancing.

Because history is no longer taught in school, we have one or more generations that do not know of the legal and constitutional workings that we are heir to.  King Charles I was beheaded for doing what Prime Minster Trudeau proposes to do – tax and spend without reference to parliament.  Never mind the excuses and justification, King Charles had his too.

The reason why we have a parliamentary democracy today is that the power of the purse lay with the House of Commons.  That power, in turn, is the legacy of the feudal customs of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes which prohibited the king from raising taxes beyond feudal custom without the consent of the people.  The king had his money, and the people theirs.  Since the thirteenth century, the consent of the people was expressed through the House of Commons.  Mr. Trudeau would casually do away with that custom.

It was the power of the purse that gradually wrested power from the executive king personally and placed it in a cabinet of parliamentary advisors to the king, advisors who commanded a majority in the House of Commons.  It is the executive power of the King that the cabinet – the King’s Ministers – exercises.  But no one must forget that taxing and spending can only be done by the consent of parliament as a whole, not on the say so of a parliamentary steering committee, one that doesn’t even happen to hold a majority in the House of Commons at the moment.

Today's Hannon Times' editorial recommendation of public shaming of scoffers is also ahistoric.  It follows more the pattern of the Chinese Red Guards than it does anything in British or Canadian history.  English-speaking people going back to the Germanic tribes never regarded themselves as an ant-hill; we always regarded ourselves as individuals with individual liberty.  So that should remain, whatever emergency or panic can be whipped up by authorities!

The liberties and rights of the people are at greatest risk whenever those with power think they can justify and get away with violating them.  Those rights include the right to be governed by a parliament, not merely by executive power.  And public shaming be damned.
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