Five Years on the Blog

Five years ago today, this weblog was launched.

Previous anniversaries:

• An Olympiad Ago Today
• Leather Anniversary
• 2 Years Old
• Anniversary

The blog was launched on the very day promulgation of parliamentary government as part of our written constitution was made.

Previously this year, a commission proposed a quite extensive revision of the Norwegian Constitution. The proposal contains a lot on human rights, including a provision on unreasonable unequal treatment. A lot can be analyzed and said. Suffice to say that it seems we – or they – now may beget a constitution that gives people all sorts of “rights” from their fellow subjects, instead of just protection against government encroachment. There is little comfort, I believe, in the worries from some politicians that the proposed revision would reduce the power of the politicos.

Views and News from Norway has a story on the constitutional revision.

Apparently, there is also an ongoing project of modernizing the language of the Constitution. There have been projects on modernizing the language of the Bible, and the result does not look good. The current language norm of the Constitution is the official norm of 1903. Although, language issues – of course – are subordinate to issues of content, generally speaking, I say go back to the norm of 1814 – for the Constitution that is.

Mr. Mark Steyn gives some perspectives on something somewhat related: