What is at stake here is the values that have been developed over centuries starting with the Magna Carta and moving through the Reformation, the ;Enlightenment, and the Renaissance. This can be called basic rights, human rights or the values we have inherited from our Greco-Judeo Christian history.

The struggles from the start of the reformation in 1517 to today are those of a working democracy, free speech and free assemblly, a legal system for all and the recognition of women as legal persons. It is often forgotten that the right of women to exist as legal persons is only a product of the post world war one period.