The Origin of Our Principles
The principles that are written here are not new. They are drawn from the teachings, writings and practices that have underpinned many ancient and modern societies.
These principles place the highest importance on individual human beings. They show a firm commitment to freedom, real and equal justice and mutual respect.
They set out the rights of all persons and the duties of government.
These rights and duties were repeatedly articulated in our heritage and they were seen as part of the divine order of things – as established by God, Nature or Reason.
No matter the perceived source, these principles were driven by the ideas that every individual human being matters, that all have inalienable rights that can not be undermined by anyone and that the highest duty of governments is to protect those rights.
One sees an understanding of these principles in the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi from 1800 B.C. The introduction to that Code includes the following words:
“the Lord of Heaven and earth … God of righteousness, [who] made it great on earth called me, Hammurabi, to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers, and enlighten the land, to further the well-being of mankind.”
The principles were elaborated and applied in Athens by Solon around 600 B.C. and further described by Pericles, Democritus, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle in the fourth century B.C.
Code of Hammurabi
Statue of ancient Greek Pericles
Pericles, the great ruler of Athens, outlined freedom as the foundation of the Athenian state and he described the unwritten laws as the guarantor of that freedom:
“The freedom we enjoy extends ... to ordinary life; we … do not nag our neighbour if he chooses to go his own way. ... We are free to live exactly as we please ... But this freedom does not make us lawless. We are taught ... to observe those unwritten laws whose sanction lies only in the universal feeling of what is right.”
““… that code which, although unwritten, … cannot be broken without acknowledged disgrace.”
Democritus, a Greek ethical philosopher of the same period stressed that respect for every person is the proper basis for a sound and virtuous society:
“Not out of fear but out of a feeling of what is right should we abstain from doing wrong. ... Virtue is based, most of all, upon respecting the other man. ... Every man is a little world of his own.”
Demosthenes (384 BC-322 BC)
Aristotle stressed the role of rational principles of natural justice as a higher authority than legislation or the wishes or dictates of any man, monarch or state:
“... we do not allow man to rule, but rational principle, because a man behaves ... in his own interest and thus becomes a tyrant.”; and
“... [what is naturally just is] that which has the same power everywhere and does not depend on our accepting it or not [or on our legislators stating it or not]”.
The same principles that have a higher authority than the wishes or laws imposed by any public official or any government were clarified again and again in Ancient Rome.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Cicero described the source of the true laws that protect the rights of individual human beings from the actions of any state using various terms – including “right reason in agreement with nature”:
“True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting ... it averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions ... It is a sin to try to alter this law, nor is it allowable to attempt to repeal any part of it, and it is impossible to abolish it entirely. We cannot be freed from its obligations by senate or people, and we need not look outside ourselves for an expounder or interpreter of it.”
He stressed that true law was universal and eternal and that it was beyond the power of any person or body to undermine it because he saw true law as the law of God:
“And there will not be different laws at Rome and at Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and all times, and there will be one master and ruler, that is, God, over us all, for he is the author of this law, its promulgator, and its enforcing judge.”
Regardless of the source of this higher law, the concepts that individual human beings matter, that they have rights that come to them simply by virtue of being a human being, that they are free to act as they wish as long as they do not violate the rights or just interests of any other person and that governments have a duty to protect those rights provided the foundation for all enduring societies in our heritage.
Those concepts lie behind all constitutions in later Rome, in Medieval Europe, in the Renaissance and in the Age of Enlightenment and history shows that when governments went too far in violating those principles, the people united to push governments back towards those principles.
They provide the enduring underpinnings of the laws of Alfred the Great, the Magna Carta, England’s Common Law, the Statesman’s Handbook of John of Salisbury, the German Sachsenspiegel, the Christian codes and numerous charters, declarations, bills, constitutions and court judgments from the Middle Ages until recent times.
Those same core principles are reflected in the Declaration of Independence of the USA and in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen of Revolutionary France.
The problem that we now face is the increasing determination of many who now hold public office who, while claiming to stand for those principles, write constitutions and laws that undermine them.
As one example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations does not accept that persons have inalienable rights that governments must protect. Instead, it insists, in Article 8, that the only rights that persons can expect to have protected are the rights that were granted to them by constitution or by law.
“Article 8 Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.”
Universal declaration of human rights
Since constitutions and laws are written by those who control our governments, that means that the only rights that persons have are those that were granted to them by governments – and since governments are seen to have the power to grant rights, they also have the power to take rights away.
At its core, the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights is incompatible with the age-old principle that dictates that every person has inalienable rights by virtue of the simple fact that they are a human being.
Recent constitutions also undermine the ancient principles that declare that every person has the equal rights, that governments can not change or undermine those rights and that governments have an absolute duty to protect the inalienable rights of every person equally.
Section 15.(1) states:
15.(1) Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination …
Section 15.(2) undermines the principle of equality by explicitly stating:
(2) Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of … individuals or groups … that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.
As a consequence of that provision, Canadian governments and courts have increasingly determined that those who claim to belong to groups that can be seen to have been somewhat disadvantaged are entitled to privileged treatment and to special benefits by virtue of laws, programs and government actions that give some a special status on the basis of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex and more.
Through such actions, those who claim some disadvantage have come to compete for privileges and benefits while others are denied their rights.
Through such constitutional provisions, the principle of equal treatment under the law is destroyed – in violation of the ancient principles that accept that all persons have equal inalienable rights and that the primary duty of governments is to protect those rights equally for everyone.
The Declaration of the UN and Canada’s Charter are not alone in having determined that the rights of persons are neither inalienable nor equal and in having decreed that the different members of society have different rights and are subject to different laws.
And as the principles of equal and inalienable rights have been undermined by such Declarations, Constitutions, Charters and laws, governments have become more authoritarian, persons have been divided into unequal camps and conflicts in our societies have grown.
The interior of the House of Commons, Ottawa, Canada
The “Our Principles” document reasserts the principles that have been accepted as the foundations of our society for millennia. It was prepared as a result of the growing realization that our heritage of equal and inalienable rights is progressively being set aside by those who have come to control our public offices and who have taken it upon themselves to use and abuse the powers of government to impose their views upon all in our society rather than to protect the equal and inalienable rights of every person.
“Our Principles” draws on our heritage of rights and freedoms to reassert the principles that have stood the test of time and that once served as Canada’s foundation. These are the principles that allowed us to live as free persons who were able to forge a better future in a society that has been seen to be among the best on earth.
These are the principles that we must restore if we are to have any prospect of having a future that is peaceful, prosperous, culturally-rich, morally-sound and free.