The Left's False Narrative

[Hurin_Rules]

I know of Germanic cultural traditions and their influence on the West as it emerged from the Dark Ages, I think such are important when considering the rise of a merchant class etc which are helpful when trying to put more pieces in place to understand how things came to be. The relevant point however, is that civil liberties is itself a theoretical position. Thus, to trace its origins as a theory one has to look at intellectual history.

Why must civil liberties be considered a theory rather than a practice?

Why do you assume this theory precedes practice, rather than vice versa?

Neither of these assumptions has been proven. Moreover, if you're talking about origins, then surely you must be able to demonstrate a consistent link between the democracy of the high middle Ages and the democracy of ancient greece. Yet, there seem to be major lacuna here that would suggest different origins for modern democracy in the ideas of the high middle ages rather than ancient Greece. Are the origins of our democratic practices really to be found in Greece rather than medieval Europe?

I understand why you mention Conciliarism, but the roots of the movement are actually quite a bit older than the 14th Century. The Eastern Church had assumed a Conciliarist posture well before. More to the point however, is this position did not involve secular law whereas natural law does.

Note I was only pointing out some, not all, of the steps you had missed.

There is no relevance to the distinction between secular and canon law. It's not doing any work for you.

Yes. Recall, I argued civil liberties finally come to the fore in the 18th Century with the construction of the Bill of Rights.

And which documents did the constructors of the Bill of Rights have as their models?

I think, the key to West's rise was it remained basically fractured whereas the other older more developed Civilizations atrophied under a single dominant system.

I might agree with you to some extent there. Nevertheless, this creates tremendous problems for Hanson's theory and your defence of it. If being politically fractured is an inherent characteristic of 'The West' that makes it superior, then the Greece and Rome you look to for the origns of 'The West' were not truly 'Western'. Greece was unified by Alexander and Rome was an empire for over 500 years.