Philip Johnson comments today on among other things, IDs for horses. His list of prohibitions makes depressing reading. He points out that:
"…the basis of English liberty is the rule of law, under which everything is allowed unless specifically prohibited. According to A V Dicey, the 19th-century constitutionalist, this was one of the features that distinguished England from its continental counterparts, where people were subject to the exercise of arbitrary power and were proscribed from actions that were not specifically authorised."
This seems to be a principle that is being rapidly forgotten in our over-regulated world. The populace, like bleating sheep, clamour in their droves for their lives to be increasingly regulated for their own good, of course. What the terminally stupid cannot see is that it diminishes them and their self determination. One day, someone who clamoured with the rest of the proles for the government to "do something" will find that the something done, diminishes their freedom to do what they have been taking for granted all these years (and what harm does it do anyway?) – and wasn’t that a nasty surprise?
When will Britain wake up from its self-induced coma and realise that the old principles were right? When it is too late, perhaps?
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