Why immigrants flock to ABCANZUS

ABCANZUS stands for Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States – the nations that inherited English Common Law.

The justice, freedom and prosperity enjoyed under ABCANZUS governments, stands in stark contrast to the brutality and injustice endured under almost all other forms of government throughout history.

Of all the people that have ever lived on planet earth, perhaps as many as 99% have endured pitiless tyranny; from brutal despots, or from poverty and disease. Most still do – even today!  Cruel rulers with self-centered values have made tyranny and neglect normal characteristics of human government – except in ABCANZUS countries.

What made ABCANZUS nations so different? Was it democracy? No!  Even the inventors of democracy, ancient Greece and Rome, were cruel slave states. Their “democracy” was for a privileged few because their rulers:

• valued themselves above all, eventually claiming to be “gods”,
• valued their own citizens only as pawns in their power-games and
• valued foreigners as sub-humans to be conquered and exploited.

Greek and Roman “democracy” failed to provide widespread justice, freedom and prosperity.  Likewise today, nations that call themselves “The Democratic Republic of …” are usually oppressive regimes that lack justice, freedom and prosperity.

For ABCANZUS countries justice came first. It took nearly 1,500 years for justice to become fair and merciful.  The amazing thing is not how long it took, but why it happened at all in a world where brutal rulers are normal.

Renowned jurist, Lord Denning, showed why.  His book “The Changing Law” traces how our common law was built in England over centuries on the basis of Jesus’ “golden rule” – treat others as you would wish to be treated. Those love-your-neighbor values were learned at countless mothers’ knees over many generations and permeated our culture and justice systems.

Without that fair and merciful approach to justice, our freedom would never have been possible. Instead it would have been freedom for the strong to crush the weak. But as widespread freedom grew in 17th century England two things happened. Parliament became influential and learning and science flourished.

Greater Parliamentary authority led to the development of what people mistakenly call democracy. Actually, while ABCANZUS countries are the most democratic on earth, they are not democracies. They have representative government – not “government of the people by the people.” The people elect representatives who provide the leadership that is an essential element in all human progress. Importantly, however, those who are led have the power to grant or withhold consent to their leaders. The result is free-dom, which means the domain in which individual choices conform with our fundamental legal value of loving others as much as we love ourselves. Such freedom is in stark contrast to liberty – which means casting aside of restraint – a feature of all revolutionary blood-letting.

Although freedom had started developing in  England in the 17th century, life for ordinary folk in both England and France was abysmal. Different national responses to these harsh social conditions produced diametrically different outcomes.

On the one hand, the English heeded the biblical Christianity of Wesley and Whitfield and emerged into a season of blessing unique in world history. The French on the other hand adopted the atheistic rationalism of the so-called “enlightenment” and murdered a generation of leaders. Their revolution had promised “liberty, equality, fraternity.” Instead, they got Napoleon, a dictator who conscripted them for even more bloodshed throughout Europe, lost their territories in America and developed a legal system that still today holds people guilty until they prove themselves innocent.

England’s freedom nurtured unprecedented scientific genius. For example, the heliocentric ideas of Polish astronomer Nicholas Copernicus, the observations of Italian mathematician Galileo Galilei, the laws of planetary motion discovered by German mathematician Johannes Kepler, the work of astronomer Edmund Halley, discovery of the blood circulation system by William Harvey, detection of live cells in plants by Robert Hooke, the ground-breaking work of Robert Boyle, “the father of chemistry”, and the multi-faceted contributions of Sir Isaac Newton, who was described by the French mathematician, Lagrange, as “the most outstanding genius that ever lived.”

All of them held a biblical view of God that inspired them to study His universe. This led famous non-Christian physicist, J. Robert Oppenheimer to declare that “Christianity was needed to give birth to modern science.”

Because freedom allowed science to take root in England, the Industrial Revolution began there in the 18th century. As it spread throughout the world it generated Western prosperity.

But our prosperity is extremely fragile.  As the renowned economist Hernando deSoto has shown,[1] our prosperity depends on having legal systems that are very difficult to corrupt.  Of course, that means systems where people resist corruption because they genuinely love their neighbor.

In summary, Jesus’ love-based values built the common law. Those values permeated the culture and governmental systems of ABCANZUS countries and gave rise to the blessings of justice, freedom and prosperity that make us magnets for immigrants of every race and religion.

But those blessings can only last as long as our culture is permeated by the love-based values of Jesus.  Why do so few of our people know this?  Perhaps it is because Christian legal values ensure that no one is forced to become a Christian.  Whatever the reason, we are failing to show new settlers that the justice, freedom and prosperity that attracted them to ABCANZUS countries will vanish if enough people use their vote to introduce legal values similar to the nations they decided to leave.