>Robert FitzWalter Neither Bowed Or Knelt at Runnymede
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Runnymede is a protected piece of land 20 miles west of downtown London.
Can Barak Obama Abolish Runnymede?
By Don White
It was the fifteenth of June,1215 when men rode over the long sweep of the Meadow of Runnymede beside the placid river where mail rang, swords, lances, shields and spears flickered and flashed in the glancing morning sunlight.
There were more than forty noblemen that formed an advancing front stretched across the width of the meadow. There in the center was Robert FitzWalter and beside him rode Eustace de Vesci. Both had been exiled but had returned to England to fight for freedom.
All forty were rebels who had drawn up the Articles Of The Barons – the great earls of Norfolk, Hertford, Essex, Oxford, Hereford and Winchester. The group included the Barons de Lacy, de Bruce, de Percy, de Stutville, and the scowling and once-outlawed FitzWarrin.
All kept their eyes fixed straight upon the objective at the opposite end of the field, a short, broad-shouldered man standing slightly ahead of the party.
As they approached FitzWalter raised his arm and the company came to a stop and dismounted, continuing toward their objective on foot. When Baron FitzWalter was standing directly in front of King John all eyes were on him. If some of the barons
thought he would kneel, he did not.
As Clifford Lindsey Alderman tells of this epic meeting in his book That Men Might Be Free, FitzWalter “proffered the roll of parchment to the king. “Here, Sire, are the demands which you have signified you are willing to grant us.”
Behind the Barons, at the upper end of the meadow, the rebel army of knights, foot soldiers and crossbowmen were massed.
“All stood motionless,” said Alderman, “but their every immobility spelled readiness. And this was heightened when here and there a knight’s charger pawed the turf impatiently. The king knew that FitzWalter had only to turn and raise his arm to bring down the might of that phalanx upon him and his party.”
King John had suffered a series of defeats at the hands of the rebels so that this final act of granting to the rebels the freedoms written on the parchment was John’s way of preserving his weakened kingdom.
“It is true,” he said, “for the sake of peace and the good of our kingdom we are willing to grant certain laws and liberties.” Behind him stood by his faltering kingdom: William Marshall, the Earl of Pembroke, finally forgiven by the king; the Earls of Surrey, Arundele and Salisbury and lesser nobles such as Warin FitzGerald, Peter FitzHerbert, Hubert de Burgh, Hugh de Neville, and William Marshall’s nephew John.
King John’s entourage, for his own protection, included the Arch Bishop of Dublin and Bishops of London, Winchester, Bath, Lincoln, Worcester, Coventry and Rochester. To protect the interests of Rome was Cardinal Pandulf, while the influential Order of the Knights Templar was represented by its master in England, Brother Aymeric.
For the reading and negotiation of the agreement, tables had been set up in tents and though the king “raised a storm of objections to almost every point of the Magna Carta, by the time long shadows had begun to steal over the meadow of Runnymede in late afternoon, the King had agreed in principle to the baron’s demands.
In fact, his majesty granted all the demands. But in order to retain the kingdom in England, the barons had to agree that if they had to make war to enforce the Magna Carta it would not be upon the king or his family. And this is the weak, symbolic kingdom John preserved that Great Britain has today. Subsequent tyrant kings such as Edward I, it is true, acted as if there was no Magna Carta, especially toward the Scots, and this became the reason for the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 and the overthrow of England in Scotland by Robert de Bruce resulting in his being crowned king of Scotland.
While we see the Barack Obama administration chipping away at the freedoms we enjoy by excessive taxation and spending, America is reminded that its cherished privileges that came to us via the Bill of Rights are fragile at best.
These principles were first conceived in a remarkable document called the Magna Carta more than five centuries before the American Revolution.
Just as today with ‘King Obama’ in power trying to make America egalitarian at least and communist at most, King John and his predecessors “by continual extortion of money and violations of federal customs aroused the wrath of the barons who, though they lived in relative luxury, objected to being subject to the king’s whims.
“When John openly opposed the Church, the noblemen revolted. At the center of this conflict stood one of the unsung heroes of history, Stephen Langton, Arch Bishop of Cantebury. He helped the noblemen draft the Magna Carta which granted men rights that were later considered inalienable. How these rights were threatened and how men have battled and died for them throughout history is part of the story that has never been asked.”
Free men believe government is the servant of the people and that freedom to think, act, worship God, and carry on free enterprise was given to man by God. In a limited way, men assigned some of these rights, but not absolute power, only partial and temporary power to pass laws to govern the country, laws that never can wipe out our rights to be master, not servant, of elected officers and governments.
When government raises taxes as Obama is doing, the power of people erodes. At one point – probably fifty percent – when aggregate local, state, and federal taxes approach or exceed fifty percent, men revolt at the ballot box and in the streets and the reigns of government are pulled, reversing its tyrannical actions. But meanwhile the damage is done and it is difficult to reverse.
Large government is the antithesis of freedom. Obama’s plan to seize companies, even financially sound firms and those that government has not bailed out, is a power grab and must be stopped.
For example, if a prominent Republican owned a thriving private company that the Democrats were envious of because it produced war material for the Pentagon, for example, under the pretext of a trumped-up emergency Obama could seize this company without excuse, believing he wouldn’t have to answer to anyone. This is abuse of power at its worst, but with the passive acceptance of a sycophant Democratic Congress, this kind of nonsense could become the order of things for the next four years.
Some who have fallen asleep call it a “soft” challenge to our Constitution, but I know it is a well orchestrated “hard” challenge designed to systematically dismantle our Constitutional rights. It’s Obama making a “run at Runnymede” and Constitution Hall.
His penchant for high taxes must stop!
His discriminatory super high taxing of the rich must stop!
There is only one nation on earth with higher corporate taxes than America and that nation is not thriving, and Obama wants the U.S. to be number one on this ignominious list. He’s not stupid. He knows that raising taxes is a disgraceful thing to do, especially during a recession. Washington is incapable of creating real and lasting employment. Jobs are created by business profits and wealth management, not by bureaucratic bungling.. But President Obama doesn’t care about how despicable his policies are. Here is a man who time after time has placed personal politics before the welfare of the country.
This is not a socialist or communist state. Government should not exist to force one strata of hardworking Americans to subsidize another. If we have learned anything during the current housing meltdown it is that when men are given something they did not earn it is short-lived and unsustainable over a long time period. Helping the poor is the work of individuals, churches and other philanthropic groups. By definition, charity cannot come from government. It derives from the free will of individuals living in a free society, donating resources to those churches and other charitable institutions who, in turn, become the mechanism of giving.
Free men, of course, can and do give millions of dollars each year in aid to the less fortunate. But that isn’t good enough for the liberal far right – they want to coerce and compel an otherwise righteous endeavor. But it becomes self-defeating on its face if it is done by Satan-inspired compulsion that from the foundations of this earth has been condemned by our maker because it eliminates man’s agency.
True charity is often encouraged but cannot be forced. It must come from the heart or it ceases to be charity. Therefore, it is impossible for government to be charitable. It is with evil intent that government taxes church donations hoping to assume the Church’s role of giving to the poor. Only an atheistic society wishes to replace church with state.
An important lesson Obama and his kind seem incapable of learning is that you can’t permanently lift up the poor with money or with the proverbial fish – unless the poor wants to “learn to fish.”
President Obama can never abolish those God-given rights agreed to at Runnymede and known as the Magna Carta. They are inalienable. Neither can he reject or, with impunity, abolish – even “softly” – the Bill of Rights, The Declaration of Independence, and the U.S. Constitution. Only the electorate can do that, and are doing that every day by indifference and inaction each time we allow people like Obama and Putin to lull us asleep while quietly expropriating means of production and taxing us to death – and in Putin’s evil revanchist way, seizing neighboring territories.
Obama can try, but as long as free men everywhere speak up and fight against such tyranny he will fail.
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