The other day my dad weirdly asked me what I thought what the most important human rights document ever written. After I didn’t answer him, he answered himself, with the Magna Carta. This whole, one sided conversation was weird, and I did my best to forget about it until the other day, when I was reading about The Civil Rights Act of 1964. After that, I was reminded of the dreaded conversation and decided to actually look up the Magna Carta, because I had no idea what it was.

Once I realized what the Magna Carta was, I was firstly confused why so many people cared to crowd around it when I was at the archives museum in DC. Then I started listing all the reasons why all the civil rights documents seem wayyyy more important. Especially The Civil Rights Act of 1964. THEN I looked up to see if people agreed with my point, and they did (just read the first sentence of this article). So this is going to be the theme I go with this week.

Modern society would not be the same without the Civil Rights Act. Without us outruling systematic oppression and discrimination at the time that we did, our society would have an ever worse power imbalance than it already has.

This is versus the Magna Carta, which was written in 1215. The reason I bring this up is I personally believe that in 1215, nothing important could have ever been signed. I think without the Magna Carta, not much would be different. Because of the fact that people were generally really stupid until AT LEAST the 1800’s, figuring out the rules of justice even, like, a century later probably wouldn’t have made much difference.

Because of the fast-progressing nature of the 20th century (I mean, we got common household electricity in the same 100 years as space travel), even putting off The Civil Rights Act of 1964 for 5 years could have deeply harmed our society. It would have prolonged our protests, both against and for equal rights and integration. It could have also possibly prolonged other issues like LGBTQ+ rights.

Without the progression of civil rights being exactly where it was, North America would not be what it is today. I mean, there’s already SO MANY AWFUL THINGS IN OUR CONTINENT. If we didn’t have important documents like the Civil Rights Act signed when they were, things would be SO. MUCH. WORSE.

Without the Magna Carta, I mean, we probably would have figured out the stuff in there before anything important happened. I’m not saying that stuff that happened in the 13th century wasn’t important, but it seems like the history you learn in school jumps straight from the fall of the Roman Empire to the 1600’s. Plus, I seriously doubt anybody in the 13th century followed the fair justice stuff written in the Magna Carta. If you don’t believe me, just look at the wikipedia page for the century. Nothing but violence and wars. Yeesh.

If you’re going to take anything away from this giant blog post that is just text that I’m not even sure is written in an appropriate style for a school assignment, let it be this: When everyone was the Magna Carta when I was in DC, they should have been crowding around the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Even though I’m pretty sure it wasn’t on display.