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A Quickie: How long is this delay anyway?
In 1700 BC, King Hammurabi wrote one of the fundamental texts in western culture. His laws, known as the "Code of Hammurabi" written not to decree his law, but what he felt were his Gods laws, a significant switch in the minds of Kings of the era who considered themselves to be God. Hammurabis Code was also written in stone, so that they could not be changed on a whim, again serving as a precedent in the ancient world. These two fundamental ideas mark the beginning of the changes in legal standards the form our ideas of law today.
The Code of Hammurabi serves as an fundamental influence to the Jewish Torah and thus to the Christian Bible, and thus to the English Magna Carta, and thus eventually to the United States Constitution.
The United States now finds itself 3700 years later in the very place the Code of Hammurabi was written helping the people of Iraq bring the offspring of the ideas expressed in the 'Code of Hammurabi' back to its mother, a land that has been scorched by tyranny for nearly that entire time.
So, when you've been waiting for 3700 years for the next upgrade in civilization, what's another week to wait for a Constitution written by its own citizens to limit the powers of government rather than a dictator to enslave its people?
3698 years - no progress towards freedom, constant tyranny, enslavement and horror for the average citizen living in what was once Mesopotamia. Yet, 2 years from liberation, on the edge of an unprecendented increase in the rights of the people of the region and a set of written and legally enshrined rights, and all anyone can talk about is the 7 day delay.
Posted @ August 15, 2005 06:51 PM | Current Affairs
Great post. You have the Reaganesqe ability to bring out what is great about this country and what is so often forgotten or worse intentionally misrepresented. You have a wonderful gift to be able to see the historical relevance of the Code of Hammurabi and Toshikazu Kase in the following post. Good stuff. Thanks
Posted by: Sota
at August 16, 2005 07:02 PM
The founding fathers of the US also took two tries to get it right.
Posted by: Whelk
at August 16, 2005 07:47 PM



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