Long-Dead W.A.S.P. Invents America: The Story of John Locke

I’m taking a class on early American history right now, and I recently wrote an essay about the influence of John Locke’s ideas on the founding of the United States, and I was blown away while doing the research. This was the man solely responsible for the creation of America. Forget the founding fathers (not really, please don’t hurt me), they didn’t do anything but rip off this guy’s ideas. Every doctrine, principal, and value that you associate with America was the original thought of John Locke. Interestingly, he was a devout Christian and actually wrote a book defending Christianity generally and Protestantism in specific. So, when people try to tell you that the United States was not founded on Christian ideas due to the fact that most of the founders were deists, kindly direct them to John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government. Personally, I find it to be strong evidence for the Christian faith that the greatest country on planet Earth is based on the thought of a devout Christian.

I thought I would share my essay with you all, rather than let it go to waste on just my history teacher and parents. I have written some other excellent (if I do say so myself) history essays on topic such as Frederick Douglass, the Temperance Movement, and Bacon’s Rebellion. I also wrote one arguing for the flat tax. Let me know if any of you would be interested in me posting those.

 

 

The Enlightenment, John Locke, and the American Colonies

In the century before the American Revolution, the citizens of the British Colonies contemplated the musings of various philosophers from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These concepts and theories eventually convinced the colonists to take a collective stand against the British Crown, and provided the blueprint for the new government these colonists would create. The ideas of the Enlightenment, particularly the writings of John Locke, heavily and directly influenced the viewpoints of the founding fathers of the United States of America, and the result may be observed most easily in the founding documents.

In order to understand Locke’s ideological impact on America’s birth, one must first be familiar with him. John Locke was an English philosopher who lived from 1632 to 1704. In 1689, he published his most influential work, Two Treatises of Government, as a refutation to the ideas of Robert Filmer and a defense of his own conceptions of human rights and government. Filmer believed that kings rightly possessed absolute authority derived from the absolute paternal authority Adam had over his descendants. Locke rebutts this argument mostly within his First Treatise, of which only a third survives. In his Second Treatise, he primarily explains, rationalizes, and defends his own ideas.

In the second chapter of his Second Treatise, Locke outlines his belief in a “law of nature,” a set of rules inherent in nature which declare moral truth. He says this law of nature teaches that all people possess equal rights and dominion over their persons and property. He condemns slavery and murder by arguing that men are all the property of God, who created them, and that therefore both violate God’s dominion over His property. Locke also outlines another crucial concept: the state of nature, defined as the condition of man before the rise of societies, during which all men have the right to self defense, and to enforce the law of nature by inflicting and receiving justice. Locke emphasizes in chapter three that the law of nature binds rulers as well. In chapter five, he rationalizes one of his defining beliefs: that of private property. Here, he argues that God gave the Earth not to Adam, as Filmer suggested, but to all mankind. He then had to explain how a person could appropriate a part of this shared possession without the consent of every other person. He argued that when someone works on something, they imbue it with their labor, and since people own themselves, and therefore their labor, they then own that thing. He does provide a limiting factor for appropriation of property: that a person must leave enough of nature of as good of quality for others.

In the latter part of his Second Treatise, Locke leaves natural rights behind and explains the need for, origins of, and nature of government. He defines three desirable items the state of nature lacks: a settled, known, universal law to which all consent (men, biased as they are, often twist the self-evident natural law to suit their interests); a disinterested judge, unaffected by the entropic forces of passion, revenge, negligence, and apathy, to ensure justice is had by all; and a judge with the power to always exact justice and to do so safely. Locke claims that as a result of these shortcomings, individuals choose to relinquish their right to execute justice to a judge, exiting the state of nature and entering a political state, in order to gain more security in their other rights of life, liberty, and property. This judge is responsible for enforcing the law of nature but still bound by it. Locke says that the end goal of entering a political state is to enjoy one’s property in peace and safety. He then argues that a man may rightly resist a political authority if his rights are violated, either by a private criminal or public official, and he has no effective appeal to the system of law for justice. Locke points out that such resistance, even when just, is often not prudent until the government’s failures affect a significant number of people. When an entire society resists authority rightfully, he believes that is not rebellion, but that true rebellion is the use of force without right, even by a political authority. John Locke ended his Second Treatise by saying that when a government rebels, they nullify their own authority, and that it is then the right of the people to install a new government, differing from the old in form or personel.

All of the founding fathers were well-educated in Enlightenment philosophy, and of all the philosophers, John Locke influenced them the most, particularly Thomas Jefferson. This may be inferred first and foremost from the very occurrence of the revolution. Locke spoke at length about the righteousness of shedding a tyrannical government and installing a new one; the colonists took this message to heart and forcefully severed ties with Great Britain and King George III. A reading of the Declaration of Independence confirms that Locke’s philosophy deeply inspired Jefferson and served as the catalyst for the revolution. In the first paragraph, for example, Jefferson references Locke’s “Law of Nature.” Every part of this quote from the second paragraph comes directly from the Second Treatise of Government.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…

Jefferson then points out that overthrowing a government is not prudent for minor offenses, but is after a long series of widespread injustices: another Lockean idea. Locke’s doctrines may be found elsewhere in the founding documents, such as in the Second Amendment, which guarantees to the people the right to self defense Locke proclaimed. The overall dedication to liberty and equality, both Enlightenment values, of the founding documents shows the fundamental adoption of Enlightenment ideas by the American founders.

The doctrines of the Enlightenment, articulated most completely by the English philosopher John Locke, provided the impetus for the colonial movement for self-government, which culminated in the Revolutionary War. After the war, these same ideals were woven into the foundation of the new United States by Thomas Jefferson and the other founders. The God-given rights to life, liberty, property, and self defense; equality; a government designed to protect the rights of the citizens from whom its authority came—each of these ideas joined to provide the basis for a new form of government.

 

Sources

“John Locke.” Online Library of Liberty. Accessed May 04, 2019. https://oll.libertyfund.org/people/john-locke.

Mack, Eric. “An Introduction to the Political Thought of John Locke.” Online Library of Liberty. Accessed May 04, 2019. https://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/eric-mack-an-introduction-to-the-political-thought-of-john-locke.

“Foundations of American Government.” Ushistory.org. Accessed May 05, 2019. http://www.ushistory.org/gov/2.asp.

The Declaration of Independence

The Constitution