A friend ( smarter than me) , wrote this about John Locke ...
(Locke, John - by Paul Rosenberg)
He was an English philosopher in the 1600's who created a new justification for human liberty and he envisioned a republic -- a form of political organization. He did this by examining what humans were like in their “natural state.” That is, what they were like before they were herded into political groups and compelled to live as rulers demanded.
He explained this in a book called the Second Treatise on Government, published anonymously in 1689. (Locke’s name never appeared on the book during his lifetime,︀ almost certainly because he feared for his personal safety.)
In his book Locke begins by︁ saying that humans are naturally free of all obligations, political or otherwise, writing this:
All men are naturally in a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose︂ of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law︃ of Nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man.
He went on the explain how such people could join together to form a government, but︄ only through voluntary agreement. He moreover explains how they or their children could exit the︅ agreement. Forward-thinking and oppressed people took Locke’s ideas and began applying them. In particular, they︆ began imagining republics based upon that foundation. (These people had no interest in democracies, which︇ had failed spectacularly in Greece.)
Republics had existed in several places, especially during and following︈ the Renaissance, but they had stood upon Roman ideas from the era of slavery, and︉ held too many of those assumptions. Locke gave people a way to build a republic︊ upon the base of human liberty and choice.
And so, in the British Colonies of︋ America, a Lockean republic formed in 1776. The American founders knew Locke’s arguments very well,︌ reciting them and praising them at length. And even though the successful American experiment of︍ dumping the monarch was followed by a disastrous French experiment, the idea of leaving the︎ king for a rights-protecting republic spread through the world and swept most European monarchies away️ over the next century or so.
Submitted by Peter Taradash 10 Dec. 2023
