TIMBER!

Remembering what our society was based on (MICHELE MARR, August 28, 2003, LA Times)

In 1957, the American Bar Assn. erected a memorial to acknowledge the influence of the Magna Carta on our Constitution and
American law.

The memorial, a classical, open-stone rotunda that shelters a pillar of English granite inscribed with the words, "To commemorate Magna Carta, symbol of Freedom Under Law," sits on the banks of the Thames in Runnymede, England, where the Magna Carta was sealed in June 1215 by King John.

Recent photos of the 5,280-pound monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments and 14 other texts that attest to the bond God has to our laws and liberties and placed in the lobby of the Alabama Judicial Building by Chief Justice Roy Moore reminded me of the memorial at
Runnymede.

The Magna Carta Memorial does not mention God as Moore's courthouse memorial does but the document it honors vociferously does. Like our own foundational charter of freedom, the Declaration of Independence, its preamble acknowledges God as the ultimate source of human law and liberty.

The preamble of that Great Charter of English Liberties concludes, "Know ye that we, unto the honour of Almighty God, and for the salvation
of the souls of our progenitors and successors, Kings of England, to the advancement of holy Church, and amendment of our Realm, of our mere and free will, have given and granted these liberties following, to be kept in our kingdom of England for ever."

The Declaration of Independence also establishes the tie between human rights, laws, liberty and God. It begins with an appeal to "the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle" a people. Then it asserts, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

The Magna Carta Memorial has stood in Runnymede for nearly five decades. Moore's monument stands to be removed from public view, on the order of Alabama's Supreme Court, "as soon as practicable."

If you try to chop out every root of freedom that traces back to a Judeo-Christian origin there'll be nothing left to support the tree of liberty. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 29, 2003 11:41 AM