In the face of “Man-Made Horrors Beyond Your Comprehension” (a phrase attributed to Tesla), there seems to me only one solution that will stick. I have in mind one most striking example, the mutilation of children to “affirm” their so-called gender. The feeble efforts of the Alberta government to put some minor limits on the horrors, and preserve some element of parental rights, is met with a hailstorm of hate from the mainstream media and a festival of outrage from the political class, from the so-called experts, and threats of self-destruction from the rising class of these self-created deities. The population tossed by this maelstrom maintains its submission. The legal class, once again makes itself notable only by its absence, which helps conceal its collapse as a functioning social institution.
The root problem is in what the law is understood to be. If the only source of the law is the state and the only expression of the law is in the words of constitutions, legislation, regulation and the pronouncement of judges (in the common law world), then you are doomed. This explains the remarkable confidence of the advocates of the various horrors, which in Canada is a long list, fully supported by every source of power, including bureaucracy, professional associations, media and public and private corporations. The advocates of the horrors know that the “law” is what the state says it is and they are the state. Accordingly, they are quite right and the dog-whistle choir is correct, they are “coming for your children” and they will get them. To pass state or provincial laws, purporting to limit the horrors, misses the point entirely and can only act as the proverbial finger in the dyke. Such laws will be replaced when the government changes as it always does, when the wind changes and blows in its generally leftward direction, aided by the tidal wave of managed demographics.
As a minority, Europeans will need much more than the positive law to survive. They will need to participate in a revolution in thinking about the law, what it is, and what they inherited from their ancestors, traces of which can be found in those states with a written constitution, like Canada. They need to go back to the future, to before a time when the law had its wings clipped by legal positivism, and before law schools began churning out the word quibblers, the clever class, who now call themselves “lawyers” but don’t deserve any association with “law”.
There are clues everywhere to that body of rights that is the true law, passed on for millennia by tradition, custom and the unspoken common sense that is preserved in our language and culture, or what is left of it. Take for example the Canadian Bill of Rights, a piece of quaint legislation of the federal legislature, that can be repealed anytime. No one talks about it much, and fewer understand it. Even the recent Emergency Act decision, although it mentions it, simply brushed it aside. The court evidently didn’t quite know what to do with its quaintness-eze, such as a right to “property”. The latter is to be found nowhere in the so-called Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is part of the actual written constitution and harder (though not impossible) to repeal.
But here is the thing (as Neil Oliver might say):
PART I Bill of Rights
Recognition and declaration of rights and freedoms
1 It is hereby recognized and declared that in Canada there have existed and shall continue to exist without discrimination by reason of race, national origin, colour, religion or sex, the following human rights and fundamental freedoms, namely,
(a) the right of the individual to life, liberty, security of the person and enjoyment of property, and the right not to be deprived thereof except by due process of law;
(b) the right of the individual to equality before the law and the protection of the law;
(c) freedom of religion;
(d) freedom of speech;
(e) freedom of assembly and association; and
(f) freedom of the press.
[emphasis added]
Here is my point. To declare that these rights “have existed” is to appeal to unwritten law. What is this law?
Take also the Preamble to what once was called the British North America Act, 1967, a simple act of the UK Parliament, but Canada’s first constitution:
Whereas the Provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick have expressed their Desire to be federally united into One Dominion under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with a Constitution similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom…
What then are these “similar” principles?
We can find another hint in the coronation oath 1688:
Will You solemnely Promise and Sweare to Governe the People of this Kingdome of England and the Dominions thereto belonging according to the Statutes in Parlyament Agreed on and the Laws and Customs of the same? The King and Queene shall say, I solemnly Promise soe to doe.
Likewise, even William the Conqueror promised his Saxon subjects to, ”uphold existing laws and customs.” The Anglo-Saxon shire courts and 'hundred' courts (which administered defence and tax, as well as justice matters) remained intact, as did regional variations and private Anglo-Saxon jurisdictions.
It has always been an trope of the common law that its judges declare what the law is, while making it, and such declared laws have indeed always been the law since “time immemorial”. As Orwellian as that may sound, it still roots the law in tradition and custom and does impose real limits on positive law making. In accordance with the natural law conception, it also imposes internal limits on the law based on reason. A law that is internally inconsistent, unreasonable, patently unhinged is not law at all. There are things you will simply not be able to do, such as make a man a woman. The positivists have always argued that this merely puts law in the hands of the moral mob that happens to be in charge, but I think that is far too reductionist. Natural law has far more room for positive law, and respect for the same, than for which it is credited.
Which brings us back nicely to the horrors. There are indeed customs in ours laws so ancient that, if acknowledged as such, stand out as truly inalienable. I will name but a few:
the rights of parents over children, including the right to make decisions about a child’s upbringing, physical integrity and education
the right to self-defence
the right to private space
the right to claim compensation in the courts from a wrongdoer
I will stop there so as not overwhelm my point in the political. These undeniably ancient rights would, if recognized as such, all by themselves overturn innumerable positive laws, including state control over children for the purpose of their gender indoctrination and mutilation, firearms seizures and no-fault regimes. Those are very good places to start. In one stroke, the advocates of the horrors would be made mute and powerless to tyrannize and torment their victims further.
But the real beginning will be in the process of rediscovering our customs, traditions and imposing on the legal profession a new and ancient regime. How we get there will be the subject of further exploration in these texts. Who knows, there may come a day when lawyers are taken off the list of most distrusted professions and may distance themselves somewhat from those who, from time immemorial, belong on that list and should remain there: the politicians, journalists and experts.