 Apparently, people still get weirded out when they hear my accent, learn that I still live in Britain and that I'm an unflinching libertarian. I know, there aren't many of us. But if that sounds like you or you want more of this paradox, go ahead and watch this video in the top right corner where myself and Bloody Revolutions, a fellow Brit who has been lucky enough to escape, talk about the last century of gun control in Britain, along with its immorality and disastrous effects, with much of the blame being laid down at the feet of so-called Conservatives, who in the UK are truly less conservative than Hillary Clinton. But today, we're going to have a bit of a history lesson, pertaining to how our modern understanding of liberty was shaped more greatly by Great Britain than any other, and stretches back to before England was even its own country. It's with this historical understanding of the nature of the gift of liberty that makes the current tyrannical affairs of Britain so genuinely tragic. Where along the way, we took this emerging force for granted and gave it away piece by piece until what remains today is a husk of its former self, and is frequently called out as Orwellian for its stark resemblance to George Orwell's book 1984, which was set in former Britain and renamed Airstrip One. Great Britain today is in a despicable state, but it only pours salt in the wounds to know just how far it's gone against its own history, and the very things that made it great for those who lived in it, compared to the rest of the world around them, and especially continental Europe. When your average person thinks about liberty, one of the things that might pop into their head is the United States Constitution. We all know that it was made with the intention of securing individual liberty against the encroachment of tyrannical governance. From here I could go on forever about how that failed so tragically too, but that's for another time. The Constitution was a continuation of what is known as English Common Law, a legal tradition starting in England which seeks to codify law, writing it in stone and securing it so that rulers can't just change the law of the land to suit their own desires. This of course was never going to be perfect, after all if you can write the rules for the rulers, and you're the ruler, you're probably not going to be too harsh since you're limiting yourself and you have most of the power. This leaves gaps in the documents which get larger over time as the next people seek to abuse them, but once again I digress. We can look back now and scorn the failures of English Common Law, but that's incredibly hard to do without its historical context. If you're familiar with English political history you might think I'm about to start here with King John, the English Barons and the Magna Carta, but I'm always one for a careful. We're going back to the 800s, the Viking Age, in the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Wethyx, led by King Alfred the Great, the only English monarch to ever have such a title as the Great. King Alfred is most famous for defeating and then making peace with the conquering Danes such as Guthrum, uniting the south and setting the stage for the emergence of a single nation of England. Alfred was likely also the most scholarly monarch in English history with a great interest in philosophy. He personally translated many intellectual books from Latin to Old English and most importantly for the sake of this video, he began the tradition of English Common Law with his law codes in what is known as Doom Book, a false translation of Old English where doom meant a law or a judgement. This codification pioneered so many legal principles which we now take for granted. Most importantly, the concept of equality before the law of every individual. Alfred is quoted as saying, Doom very evenly, do not doom one doom to the rich, another to the poor, nor doom one doom to your friend, another to your foe. It seems Alfred the Great might have been the first antagonist against crony capitalism. Now this description might not sound all that unique considering this basically all comes from Christianity and its morals there. And of course in the 9th century lots of people were very pious towards these teachings as was Alfred but he went as far as to justify these codes as right not just by their proclamation in scripture but right in their own regard perhaps making the first secular law code in human history. But of course I'm not a historian and I could be completely off the mark by saying that. What I think most speaks to the character of Alfred is in his preface he says, A man has no need for a law book if he judges fairly and equally. This can perhaps give his code the same objective that the US Constitution had except 900 years earlier. A legal document not seeking to bind to the people but seeking to bind authority. Of course as the US Constitution has failed in that objective today Alfred's doom book was funnily enough doomed to fail. As authority will always use its authority to skirt the limits of its authority. But the ongoing tradition of English common law was then created and would come to be one of the greatest hallmarks of British civilization in the defense of individual liberty and even still to this day no legal system has come to surpass it in this goal. Countries today that we consider relatively free like the United States and New Zealand directly inherited English common law from the empire. And other places like Switzerland used the same legal principles and so arguably adopted the tradition for its merits. So 400 years after Alfred in the village of Runnymede near Windsor the much more famous Magna Carta was written and signed by the often-prone to tyranny King John under the threat of civil war. Just to flex a little bit on you here King John's tomb is in Worcester Cathedral and a copy of the Magna Carta is kept in Salisbury Cathedral. I used to live in both of those places and I've seen them both several times. Yep, I am that cool. Alfred's Anglo-Saxon law codes had been stripped away when the Anglo-Saxons were removed from the English throne in 1066 by William the Conqueror who came from Normandy in northern France. William had no concern towards limiting his own power and set no precedence of fairness other than biblical ones and we know how little medieval kings cared about religious morality when it didn't suit them. Several of William's descendants were pressured by barons and the church to sign documents such as the Charter of Liberties which gave some protections to those groups but no concern towards the regular citizenry. At the time of King John many people had become fed up with the obvious results of this and many English barons were ready to wage civil war unless the king signed the Magna Carta Libertatum meaning the Great Charter of Freedoms. This was a very hands-on document regarding the process of justice by ensuring quick trials, fair punishments and no illegal imprisonment at least with a baronage. You might notice this sounds a lot like the sixth and eighth amendments of the US Constitution but to really draw the line connecting the Anglo-American traditions the Magna Carta specifically exempts taxation without representation. One of the main reasons for the American Revolution which the colonists took every chance to mention. Now there is a lot of history surrounding the Magna Carta including the fact that neither the king nor the barons upheld their ends of the agreement and they did go to war. The Pope involved himself and annulled the Charter so then it had to be reaffirmed by John's descendants but we're only going to talk about its effect on common law in regards to individual liberty. What I believe the Magna Carta should be more considered as rather than a constitution for the people is an enabling of the decentralization of power from the monarch. The creation of barons councils was essentially the creation of a parliament set up to check the king and barons did use this many times to prevent tyrannical injustices such as tax increases wars political imprisonment and so on. At this point I have to mention that up against modern libertarian scrutiny a lot of this sounds pointless at best useless at worst but you have to remember the overall condition of medieval politics which was literally the time of serfdom. When you're looking through history to find the origins of freedom you have to be very grateful of the little morsels you find to build the greater narrative and you have to especially consider that this was over 500 years before the American Declaration of Independence. Now later we have what might be the event of English history that I admire more than any other the peasant's revolt of 1381. The most unfortunate part of this is that Marxist historians have laid claim to this as being part of their narrative and I completely disagree. So in 1381 a man named Watt Tyler led a rebellion from Kent against King Richard II with their demand being an end to serfdom allowing people to own their own property choose their employers an end to government wage fixing which prevented employers from outbidding their competitors by offering workers a higher income and as economic principles such as specialization were beginning to emerge very rapidly the peasantry were becoming richer through trade laws were being put in place to stop them from buying goods that the aristocracy wanted for themselves essentially imposing tariffs on the poor. I don't think I need to explain how all of this sounds remarkably free market capitalist these peasants and serfs specifically wanted private property as after all the practice of serfdom is a violation of the homestead principle as people built literal homesteads thereby creating justified private property but then the lord of the manor said actually no I own that because I say so the non-political class kept facing artificial economic barriers from the monopolists and they just said screw you I'll make a black market they disregarded the government's control on the economy undertook in free enterprise and trade and would have seen Marx's ideas of economic collectivization just as terribly as weed libertarian capitalists do by realizing that giving a central body command of the economy benefits nobody but those in command and that only free trade and mutual agreement is right moral and best. What's Tyler was accompanied by a priest named John Ball who did say some things of a proto socialist nature but the interpretations of scripture from one man don't come close to the actions and demands of thousands who just wanted to live their own lives. This revolt ultimately failed and the leaders were killed and while no sweeping changes were made concessions on serfdom were made in towns where it was particularly bad. Over time the aristocracy moved away from its objective at the time of the Magna Carta as it acted less and less like a check on the monarch's power and more as factions seeking to gain the monarch's favor or topple them for their own ends and this paints the picture perfectly of the courts of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. These courts are famous for their backstabbing under the table deals and various cliques trying to flatter, mislead or straight up kill the sovereign depending on what is in their best interests at the given time. The Tudor era is also most notable for its religious disputes as Catholics and Protestants just loved killing each other. In the case of Bloody Mary you basically had state sanctioned genocide until Elizabeth managed to put a stop to it but not managing to give the English Catholics full religious freedom but at least stopped the bloodshed and allowed this freedom to be gradually restored over time. Now as we're getting on in the video it's time to move away from the role of the English monarchy in the common law and liberty but to the period of the Enlightenment where things of this nature really start to kick off and we can view with some sort of real affection. I don't know how many times I've talked about John Locke on my channel so far but I just can't help it and you're going to have to bear with me. Locke has some glaring flaws and inconsistencies now but he really did define the best mode of thinking during the rise of liberalism and put down the precedents for how we conceive of liberty as a whole. He put it in no unclear terms that human rights are natural rights and are accompanied by natural law. They cannot be granted by government, they are granted by your existence and a government can only protect or abuse your rights it cannot give them to you. To quote him here all people have natural rights of life, liberty and property. Government was to protect these and if it didn't overthrow it. On the purpose of natural law being supreme he said wherever law ends tyranny begins. The moral laws of human nature are the preservation of your human rights and any law which abuses this is immoral and tyrannical. In many cases Locke sounds like he could be giving a speech at the Mises Institute today. Most importantly for us he rounded off the Homestead principle by explaining the just creation of property and why it belongs privately to the individual. But we can see some vagueness appearing when he says that resources can only become property providing there are enough other resources for other people to use as well. It's a great shame that Locke died before Karl Menger could explain the concept of scarcity to him and iron out this logical crease. He also was a proponent of the social contract theory but I think his previous quotes about the miniscule role of government exempt him from being lumped in with the gross likes of Rousseau. Locke's contributions to the philosophy of liberalism did go on to make Great Britain the freest of any developed nation in the world. It solidified the secular conception of liberty once and for all and originated the critically important concept of the separation of church and state, de-legitimizing the idea that a governing authority has a right over the conscience of individuals and that there is no legitimate divine belief that is enforced by violence. Liberal tradition after Locke in England is not my area of strong suit so I'm going to have to keep it vague and really just give a political overview of liberalism in the 19th century. Liberalism became the dominant force in British politics in the mid to late 19th century after the Napoleonic era and onwards and it is best represented by William Gladstone, leader of the Liberal Party who held the position of prime minister for a combined 12 years. Liberals of this era were staunch defenders of individualism, free trade and equal rights. At this time liberty was fervently defended at home but as the empire was continuously expanding around the world it didn't exactly treat the people it found with equal rights to put it extremely lightly. John Stuart Mill was the prominent liberal English thinker of this time and still has considerable influence over modern classical liberals here. However as he argued from a utilitarian standpoint saying that liberty was right because it makes people better off in just about every sense of the word he opened up a door that is deeply hated by modern libertarians who argued liberty from a deontological standpoint as being right by its own nature regardless of its outcome taking a more typically Lockean approach to it and it's after Mill that things start to take the turn massively for the worse. Taking Britain down the path it finds itself on today. At the turn of the 20th century a new liberalism social liberalism or positive liberalism became dominant which is what Americans simply call liberalism today. It was comprised of circular logic so drastic and contradictory it has absolutely no right to claim any sort of liberal connection. This idea of positive liberalism said people didn't have negative rights which I previously described as natural rights which cannot be given but that people had positive rights which others had a lawful obligation to fulfill. So the ideas of natural law were demolished to chase the dream of making the world perfect for its inhabitants through the vessel of government with no regard to tyranny which previous liberals rightly sought to tie down to the best of their ability and prevent from gaining power as any government which is powerful enough to take care of you is powerful enough to take care of you in finger quotes. Once these truly illiberal ideas took hold and called themselves liberalism England was doomed. The contradictions are downright disgusting that inalienable natural rights must be violated through seizure of property in order to facilitate property ownership self-defense must be criminalized for the greater good and called gun control free trade must be regulated so it's free and literally name only with the intent of creating wealth somehow choice must be removed in the pursuit of choice all in all that individual rights must be forfeit to the collective and then they go ahead and call it freedom god it makes me furious and well the rest is history now here we are we had the first culture and country to conceive of liberty as protection from government and now we're infamous for our out of control government that arrests people for owning screwdrivers and posting offensive tweets the tyranny in china is terrible but at least they don't do it claiming to make people free liberals would have spat on the idea of the greater good as the most dangerous mission an authority could ever be given and now that is the motivation and justification behind every single thing the government does and it's driven us to near ruin over 1000 years of movement in the name of individual liberty has been completely destroyed in one century and we're right back on the road to serfdom as Friedrich Hayek called it so perfectly you are not a free individual anymore you are a subject of the crown a chess piece being commanded around and told it's for your own safety this is not a lie if someone breaks into your home in the middle of the night and you keep a cricket bat under your bed and use it to defend yourself but you don't play cricket you are being sentenced and punished for defending your rights of life liberty and property in your own home you have no rights if you can't defend them otherwise they're just nice sounding platitudes and nice sounding platitudes are the only remaining legacy of liberalism in Great Britain such grand and dearly held concepts such as such as a quality before the law private property individualism limited government and free trade gave way to the illiberal kinsian economic policy and the crushing of civil rights under the guise of the greater good a vague utterly meaningless and downright impossible pursuit and what happens to be the perfect excuse for tyranny because it lets it get away with itself tyranny correctly being described as the suppression of natural rights and natural law the freedom that exists within you and is yours to own and defend there are no longer free individuals on the british aisles there are only cogs in the machine we gave freedom to the world then took it from ourselves for the sake of making ourselves feel nice while ignoring the innumerable more problems that have been created along the way now war is peace freedom is slavery ignorance is strength i've been asked a lot of times why i use britannia as my profile picture as britannia has often been linked to british imperialism and i counter that claim on the following grounds britannia is the personification of the roman goddess called liberty whereas the crown and the flag are the symbols of imperialism and authoritarianism this is in the exact same way how in french culture marianne is the personification of liberty in american culture columbia is the personification of the goddess liberty the same goddess who stands as the very statue of liberty in new york whereas uncle sam is the embodiment of the u.s government for this reason i claim that britannia especially with the union flag replaced with the gadsden flag as it is in my case is the embodiment of the fantastically rich school of english liberalism not its government