BY: KATY ANDERSON

JOHN LOCKE:AN INFLUENCE ON FORMING A

DEMOCRATIC AMERICA

WHO READ LOCKE?

• The founding fathers• Especially….Thomas Jefferson & John Adams. • Locke captured the American mindset• Inspiration for the Declaration of Independence

NATURAL RIGHTS

• “Life, Liberty, and Property”• The American mindset

• A “conservative revolutionary”• Collective power should be entrusted to a system

of government.

REBELLION

• Belief in community • Ability to revoke government authority by no

longer placing trust in them.• “The legislative cannot transfer the power of making

laws to any other hands: for it being but a delegated power from the people, they who have it cannot pass it over to others.”

• Second Treatise on Government, John Locke.

HOW GOVERNMENT SHOULD OPERATE

• “The legislative cannot transfer the power of making laws to any other hands: for it being but a delegated power from the people, they who have it cannot pass it over to others.”

• Second Treatise on Government, John Locke

• 3 stages:• The state of nature, which states that every person has the

natural right and the ability to control their “executive power of the law of nature.”

• In reference to the community. This comes prior to having a “collective power entrusted to a system of government.”

• The “commonwealth.” This stage examines the way by which the community gathers to make a “majority vote” to decide to allocate, “its executive power of the law of nature to a system of government, for it to exercise on the community’s behalf so long as the trust continues.”

PROPERTY RIGHTS

• “So when he takes something from the state that nature has provided and left it in, he mixes his labour with it, thus joining to it something that is his own; and in that way he makes it his property.”

• Second Treatise on Government, John Locke.

JOHN LOCKE TODAY

• Influence on any and all property rights• Whatever you put your labor into is in fact your own

property

• Community and government• Much more complicated now – larger populations,

political parties, etc.

• “All men are born free and equal”• Progress still being made.

• Natural rights to life, liberty and property are simple ideas that helped the United States grow into the thriving nation that it is today.