Courts and Governments

A general stance of those on the right, Christian or otherwise, it seems, is to be anti-Europe, and also in particular, anti-ECHR (European Court of Human Rights). As the right-wing press usually bemoans, it gets in the way of us doing the things we want to. Ten a penny are the Daily Mail stories to this effect.

What I don't quite understand is why this is such a bad thing. If we assume first off that the Court of Human Rights is a court set up to defend the liberties of humans in a fallen world, and does so without bias (but with the odd mistake here and there), then is it a problem if it says to a government that it can't do something that stands in the way of civil liberties?

For example, with this cleric recently released from jail in the UK; the ECHR has stopped his deportation to Jordan because courts there may try him using evidence elicited via torture.

Now what I don't quite understand here is what the problem is exactly. Do right wingers want us to be a country that hands people over to be tried by courts that use torture to elicit evidence? Wash our hands of them and be done of it?

Now I appreciate this man is charged with something pretty nasty, but he is still a man, and still innocent until proven guilty, and what about the precedent of allowing someone to be tried unfairly, regardless of how unpleasant he or she is? The precedent isn't a great one. So thus, I don't really understand what the opprobrium from the right is here.

Governments generally set the rules; usually, I guess (I'm not an expert here by any means since I'm not a lawyer), they are also confined to act within a constitution. So what is wrong if a court is able to point out to a government where it is behaving illegally, domestically or internationally? Are we really happy to live under governments that feel able to do whatever they like, trampling on the civil rights of citizens? Why shouldn't governments be kept in check?

Of course both governments and courts make mistakes, are guilty of terrible things, but resorting to specific examples where courts made nasty decisions and governments were more noble (e.g. slavery) doesn't really answer the more general point I'm making here: Why shouldn't governments be kept in check? Why do we want governments to be unrestricted in what they do? If we do, then I think we are guilty of a contradiction - we are essentially slaves to governments in the latter situation.

Can someone enlighten me please?!

Christians and Kings

Today is the 60th anniversary of the current Queen of England ascending to the Throne, and Christians, particularly on the right, are lauding this.

I think leftie Christians are often slightly uneasy about this, and I've noted right-leaning Christians making a big play about the fact that this is wrong, that the Queen (and any head of state for that matter) is of course only there because God put him or her there.

This is undoubtedly true, and the fact that the Queen, it seems, does communicate the Gospel will is an added bonus - something to praise God about.

But I'm just not sure that the justification I've given here is a reason for right-leaning Christians to beat left-leaning ones (or even centrists ones for that matter). Surely the same reasoning says Gaddafi was the God-ordained leader of Libya for quite a few years, and Assad is currently God ordained for Syria, right?

Or have I got that wrong?