Pre-Government Natural Rights Extremism: Older Than The Postman

Magna Carta Is A Fine Starting Paragraph

Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat file this dispatch from the British political menagerie.

The Pre-Government Natural Rights Extremist believes the state is a small late arrival to a much older party, and should be more grateful, ideally curtsying. Editor Alan Nafzger of the Editor’s Desk at prat.uk presents the field guide, with help from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Locke and Britannica on natural rights.

Twenty Tells: Spotting The Pre-Government Natural Rights Extremist On A British High Street

1. Has explained, at length, that natural rights existed before the postal service.
2. Refers to the state of nature the way other men refer to backpacking.
3. Holds any law that conflicts with natural rights is structurally a draft.
4. Maintains a fantasy in which the state is downsized to a sort of polite reception desk.
5. Refers to John Locke as our founding analyst.
6. Treats any new bill of rights as an admission that the old one was not enough.
7. Maintains a binder of essays on prepolitical liberty.
8. Refers to Magna Carta as a fine starting paragraph.
9. Holds any government that taxes without representation is fundamentally a quaint hobby.
10. Has explained, at a wedding, that the toast is to inalienable rights.
11. Refers to property the way priests refer to grace.
12. Treats any judge who departs from natural law as a kind of weather.
13. Maintains a soft spot for trial by jury and a harder one for habeas corpus.
14. Refers to the rights of man the way other men refer to old albums.
15. Holds any constitution should fit on a postcard.
16. Maintains a fantasy in which the entire body of statute since 1215 is rationalised, gently.
17. Refers to the social contract as a polite later addition.
18. Treats any sentence about positive law as a small structural sigh.
19. Has explained he is fundamentally on the side of the unwritten and the older.
20. Believes the cure for the country is fundamentally fewer statutes and more woods.

Editor’s Note

If any of this rings a bell, you have wandered into a libertarian conference, a country house weekend, or a Bitcoin meet-up with very strong opinions. More dispatches at govna.uk and the parent site prat.uk. For a second opinion that is also wrong, see Private Eye.

SOURCE: https://prat.uk/category/politics/

Charlotte Whitmore

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