Welcome to Citizen. We've got a special show for you today about a falling empire, not our own.

While we may seem like we're in trouble there's a there's a country out there that's in far dire straits and with a much longer history

we're talking about England.

Or as some people are saying now, not great Britain.

The phrase great Britain used to carry some pretty serious weight.

There's this old saying that the sun never set on the British Empire.

Because no matter what time zone you're in,

there was at least one territory that was controlled by the British.

The phrase Great Britain did not merely describe an island or a monarchy on the edge of Europe,

described a civilization that believed in itself, believed in its laws and its

institutions, and legitimacy of the order that it had built. Britain helped give the modern world

its constitutional vocabulary. From the struggles between the crown and the parliament,

emerged the principle that law stood above rulers.

You can see this in the Magna Carta and the agreement of the people and then, you know,

over time through English common law.

This fruition,

if you want to call it that of the

idea of natural law from Aristotle and the logos from Seneca that we talk about sometimes.

The tradition of English common law built case by case and precedent by precedent

formed one of the most durable legal systems in all of human history, one we still use

today.

Parliamentary government evolved not from theory, but from centuries of hard political experience,

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