With the passing of Her Majesty the Queen this past week, I thought this would be an excellent time to reflect on her role as part of our constitutional monarchy and the independence movement in Alberta. You may ask what these two ideas have in common: The short answer is, quite a lot..You see, the British Monarch sits at the head of a constitutional monarchy that stretches back many centuries and proved to be one of the most successful and enduring parliamentary democracies to date. Most nations that sprang from the British Empire adopted forms of parliamentary democracies similar to that found in London. This style of democracy has far-reaching, deep roots that go back 800 years to freedom-defining events like the Magna Carta..There are are important events in this history and philosophies that to this day underpin British jurisprudence and government. A critical concept that has given us our freedom from tyranny and government overreach is the idea of Lex Rex..First postulated in the book of the same name written in 1644 by Samuel Rutherford, it simply means Law is King. While we may not find that particularly earth-shattering, it was a revolutionary idea when the exact opposite was the general rule— Rex Lex, or The King is Law. It put forth the idea the king or government was subject to the law and not a law unto themselves. It was radical and premised upon the Christian ideal that since Christ, as king, had subjected himself to the law and the penalty that came with it on our behalf, shouldn’t all rulers follow the same example?.This struck at the very concept of the divine right of kings and led to other radical ideas, such as inalienable rights granted divinely and not by the government..Law could be king because there was a divine lawgiver. After all, the thinking went, if governments are the granter of rights, they can just as quickly take them away. Sound familiar? This Lex Rex became one of the chief cornerstones of British government and jurisprudence extending out to all the various corners of the empire, including the colonies that would take this concept to its natural conclusions with the American Revolution. And it has endured with the British monarchy to this day..How does this connect with the independence movement in Alberta? Quite easily and more so over these last few years. What began as a movement of legitimate grievance regarding a province unequally yoked to a confederation designed to keep it subservient to Laurentian interests in Ottawa, has morphed into something much more visceral..It is no longer just an 'Us vs Ottawa' issue, but a fight for the concepts and principles the monarch and the British system of law and government were supposed to represent, that Law is King. Yet we have witnessed — and haven’t we all chaffed at the brute unfairness of it all — through the pandemic, a government imposing its will upon the people 'for our safety' but not upon itself? 'What is good for thee, but not for me,' seems to be the mantra of Ottawa and even our 'sky palace' friends in Edmonton..Have we not come to the cold and sober recognition our rights were not worth the paper they were written on, with a government behaving as a law unto itself or, to put it in the ancient parlance, Rex Lex?.Yes, the passing of the Queen has been a time of sober reflection, both upon her years of faithful service and of what she and the monarchy are supposed to represent, and the things that mark the greatness of our system of democracy..Perhaps that's passing, too?.If so, Alberta independence becomes imperative so that we may be a bastion of those principles that make for great democracies. There's a lawgiver, it's not the government, that we have inalienable rights, and because of that Law is King..James Albers is James Albers is a Calgary-based management consultant specializing in leadership development. He was formerly a school principal and teacher of history, and active in conservative politics.
