Before one can understand our “form” of government, one must understand the political philosophy which defines our rights as individuals.
John Locke, in the Two Treatises of Government, presents the logical conclusion of western thought in its treatment of the rights of individuals. What we today call classical liberal thought, helped to fuel the American Revolution. It is through Locke that one can understand our history, our rights as individuals (note that I refuse to use the term “human rights” as the very title assumes group rather than personal rights), our heritage, and quite frankly our birthright as Americans.
While Locke’s First Treatise, is a must read refutation of the divine right of kings, I’ll cover this book at a later date. With the rise of communism in the western hemisphere and the birth of the cult of personality in the America’s, it still is relevant to people who look to saviors to rescue their nation.
At the moment, it is much more important to understand the theoretical underpinnings of individual freedom and that is what The Second Treatise is all about.
THE STATE OF NATURE
TO understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man. A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection, unless the lord and master of them all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one above another, and confer on him, by an evident and clear appointment, an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty.
Before the creation of political society, man is born into a perfect state of nature–each equal to other in terms of station and rights. The key to understanding Locke and understanding your rights as an American, is this natural state or Natural Law. You are born into this world with certain freedoms.
In this next section, Locke spells out the origins of your natural rights….
But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of licence: though man in that state have an uncontroulable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it. The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions: for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker; all the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the world by his order, and about his business; they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another’s pleasure: and being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for our’s. Every one, as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station wilfully, so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.
Locke writes that the laws of nature are self-evident. Among those laws, are that men are “equal and independent” and that “life, health, liberty, or possessions…” are “the wormanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker….”
In other words, our Creator (simply a just and loving God) made men equals (and by equal Locke meant in terms of rights) and He gave them the rights of life, liberty, health, and property. These rights are part of the natural law of the universe, created by God, and easily discoverable by all if we only look.
Do you grasp the earth shattering importance of Natural Law? Unlike the totalitarian, the authoritarian, the theocrat, the dictator, the monarch, or the demagogue, who argue or impose, that rights flow from the state, Locke’s Natural Law turns that ancient notion on its head. Not only does it dispel the belief that the emperor, the general, or the king is better than or above the citizen, it states that rights are not a grant of an individual, are not the grant of a state or government, but the inherent birthright of the individual.
Not only are the rights to life, liberty, and property the prerogative of the individual, they are granted by God himself.
Do you understand the ground shattering importance of this theory? No government, no individual may violate or take away your rights. They are granted by the Creator and no earthly power can contradict the Almighty.
That train of thought was devastating to monarchies of the 17th century.
Unfortunately, we have seemingly forgotten our God given rights in the 21st century. We allow our government to grant us privileges to drive or travel. We allow our government to take our property through seizures or eminent domain that serves no public purpose. We allow our government to grant rights by group–of which this is the worst transgression.*
All of these should be abhorrent to a nation born to freedom. Yet we obviously don’t understand the source of our freedoms.
NEXT: Civil Society and the Limits of Government
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* Group rights. We have gay rights. We have hate crimes. We have affirmative action. The “progressives” promote these kind acts of government everyday, yet they are a danger to your personal freedom. First, government can grant you no right because God has already given you perfect freedom.
Note how the modern left talks about human rights, Palestinian rights, or the rights of this minority or that minority. Never does the modern left talk about individual rights. Why, because individual rights, granted by an all powerful Creator limits their power over you.
Think of groups rights this way. Hitler ruled by granting rights only to certain groups. If you were loyal and German, you won the lottery. If you were part of the “Jewish group”, you lost—your life.
Closer to home, the South denied blacks rights as a group. It was only the conflict with the ideal of the Declaration that finally destroyed slavery and Jim Crow and groups rights. Yet a few short years later, we seem set to repeat our mistakes.
47 million people don’t have insurance. Now our government will grant these people the right to health insurance by robbing another group of the liberty and property….
Group right are dangerous because, one, government grants them and second, you never know when your group will get the short end of the government stick.
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Tags: Locke, Second Treatise
3 Comments to “Classical Liberalism: The Bedrock Theory of Our Rights–Part One”
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This was an excellent post, and very thought provoking. It gets down to the big problem that many on the left have with conservatives and why it is that we seem to be obstructionists as far as their point of view is concerned.
John Locke was one of many sources of inspiration for our founders. His notion of natural rights and their derivation from He whose workmanship we are permeates our founding, and is echoed in the Declaration of Independence.
You are absolutely correct that the notion of individual rights is anathema to people that seek to expand the power of the state. Rather they concentrate upon the rights of society and of groups of people over the rights of the individual – as you note.
This notion of the “statists” is more in line with the philosophy of Rousseau, and was one of the central differences between the American Revolution which ultimately resulted in a stable government of free men, and the French Revolution which eventually decayed into the tyranny of Napoleon’s empire – after devolving first into anarchy.
Where the Declaration of Independence speaks of the duty of government being to ensure the rights of individuals the French Declaration of Rights subsumes all rights to the rights of society as a whole, even while acknowledging the existence of those rights.
I believe that this is the central point of disagreement between “left” and “right” in our political thought today.
On another note, there was a lot more behind the war of 1861 than the abolition of slavery though. While slavery and the “rights” of men to own one another were indeed issues that resulted in that conflict, it was the South’s declaration that the Northern states and the federal government had violated their obligations under the U.S. Constitution and thereby made that social compact between the states null and void that justified secession. In fact, South Carolina even cited the Declaration of Independence when arguing for their secession, although individual rights were not a part of that argument.
That war wasn’t fought over slavery. It was fought over the dissolution of the union. It was fought to preserve a powerful federal government at the expense of the states, and to prevent the ultimate dissolution of the union due to future secessions by states that have no other recourse against a federal government that tramples upon their rights.
Lincoln’s famous “emancipation proclamation” didn’t abolish slavery. It was a pair of executive orders that declared the freedom of slaves in states that were not a part of the nation that Lincoln had any authority over. It was a punishment for the rebellion of those states rather than any boon to slaves in general. That it ultimately committed the union to end slavery only occurred two years after the war had begun, and that commitment wasn’t even popular in the union.
The abolition of slavery came about due to the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution. This amendment was passed by the Congress of the Union in January of 1865, some three months before the surrender at Appomattox, and without the participation of the South, which at the time was not a part of the United States. It had no effect even after that surrender until it was ratified eight months after that surrender, and was only a side-effect of the war.
Thanks Perri. Your post a week back gave me the inspiration to revisit our political heritage.
How we can get there from here…
Don’t look to the schools to provide the necessary education to raise up conservatives. We must educate ourselves and our children. We must also educate one another….