William Shakespeare tweets on Stephen Harper

These growing feathers plucked from Caesar’s wing

Will make him fly an ordinary pitch,
Who else would soar above the view of men,
And keep us all in servile fearfulness.[1]

~ Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 1599

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[1] William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, eds. Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen (New York: The Modern Library, 2011), p. 6 (Act 1, Scene1).

Reasons to protect the CBC - the case as put in 1579

Here is a look at the text of Vindiciae, Contra Tyrannos, a French Calvinist work written in 1579 during the period of that nation’s Wars of Religion.  It was published pseudonymously, and the authorship is still something of a mystery. The work was translated fully into English from the original Latin and French in 1648 a year before King Charles I lost his head, and it reappeared again in 1689 on the occasion of the Glorious Revolution, when absolutism apparently ended.  Generally it can be considered a work of “reform”.  The following section asks whether the “king” is the “proprietary lord ... of the public domain”, and it explains why we should keep the modern-day CBC:

So what? Just because someone has made you a shepherd for the sake of the flock, did he hand over that flock to be skinned, sold off piecemeal, driven, and plundered at your pleasure?  And because the people has constituted you as duke or judge of some city or region, has it empowered you to alienate, sell, or ruin that city or region?  Since the people would be alienated together with the region, did it therefore give you authority in order for you to pull it apart, prostitute it, and to dispose of it to whomsoever you wished?  Then again, is the royal dignity a possession, or is it rather a function?  If it is a function, what does it have in common with property?  But if it is a possession, is it not at least of the type whereby the people – by whom it is handed over – retains the property to itself in perpetuity.  And finally, if the patrimony of the fisc – that is, the domain – is truly called the dowry of the commonwealth, and, indeed, a dowry at the piecemeal dismantling and ruination of which the commonwealth itself, the kingdom, and eventually the king himself perish, then by what law will it be licit to alienate that dowry?[1] ...

Consequently, if an owner who is squandering his own resources is consigned to agnates or other relatives by public authority and forced to keep his hands off his own things, it is clearly much more equitable that a curator of the commonwealth who diverts public resources to the public ruin, or who completely overturns them, could be deprived of all administration by those whose concern and office this is, if he failed to desist after a reproof.

It is easily shown that in all legitimate realms the king is not the proprietary lord of the royal patrimony.[2]

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[1]Stephanus Junius Brutus, the Celt, Vindiciae, Contra Tyrannos: or, concerning the legitimate power of a prince over the people, and of the people over a prince, ed. and tr. George Garnett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 113,114.

[2] Ibid., p. 119.

I

School Act 82 and the B.C. Ministry of Education Attention: George Abbott

I recently received an email message from my son’s middle school requesting that I provide “missing” documentation in order that the school get provincial funding for teaching him.  The school system now needs to have documented evidence of the parent’s status in Canada, residency and guardianship.  In short, I was born in Canada, I have lived at my current address for about 12 years, which is about the length of time I have been raising my son.  I have always known the school system to be rather egocentric, but the politicians and Ministry of Education behind School Act 82 are way over the top here in terms of legalistic invasiveness and lack of common sense.

My son is in 7^th grade.  I already provided citizenship evidence about 8 years ago.  Now I have to do it again, but with far more documentation.  Why? Is the original information suspicious?  Are we all under suspicion? Does trust play any role any more in British Columbia? Are we still citizens?  Or is the B.C. government more concerned with population control? Is the Tri-Cities area (where my son has gone to school) no longer in the same country? Is it possible that my son’s teachers were not teaching my son?  Is it possible that I don’t really have a son at all?  Is it possible that somebody else’s boy is posing as my son?  Have I been forging the “parent’s signature” all along? Is it possible that I have been pretending to cut the grass at someone else’s home for the last dozen years?  Am I an imposter?  Are other parents natural-born imposters?  Are the children learning “bad-imposter” habits from their parents? Does it mean that my “son” gets and “F” on all his “Picture Book Projects” because his “father” has not yet proven to the province that the photos are those of  “family”, “home” and “country”?

Well, instead of birth and death certificates I would like to propose “life” certificates – an all-in-one panoptical package, perhaps formatted in an iPod, complete with the necessary documentation that proves who you claim you are and where you live: in short, that you exist, along with a “family” tree – and of course, pictures.  In order to prevent identity theft (or loss), it is best that children get the iPod implanted somewhere discreet, and the good thing is that these devices are getting smaller all the time.  Each year kids can go to school for scanning to prove that they have a life, and if they don’t show up – it will be proof that their parents did not pay their taxes, or that they are imposters.  Quick, get me the Minister of Education ...