What did the founders learn from John Locke?

0:06John Locke once wrote, "In the beginning, all the world was America." What he was imagining there, he was trying to think about, how did people come to live in communities in which they had governments? How was society created? How were governments created? When Europeans, as they believed, had discovered the new world, it led to a lot of fantasizing about the order of humans. Like where did rule come from? How did anybody come to rule anybody else? At the time, you have to remember that England itself in the 17th century was going through tremendous political ferment and tumult, a political revolution, a Civil War, and it led people to look for ways to understand, political philosophers and politicians alike to look for ways to understand,

0:51well, how does the King come to rule over us? How did we come to have parliament in the first place? What rights do we have relative to Parliament and to the King? Locke had this idea, well, let's imagine a world before there are any rulers at all. Like, picture survivor. You're on an island and there are 20 people, who's going to be in charge? Who's going to survive? Who's going to say what time we're going to eat? Who has to provide the food? Who's going to clean up and whether you can sleep in the best hut? Who gets to have the boat to go fishing with? Whatever.

1:23Who makes these decisions? Do any of us have any rights that are inalienable that no matter what we decide about who's going to be in charge, none of these particular things can be done to us like, you can't kill me and eat me. You know what I mean? What are the inalienable rules? What are fundamental rights and laws v. ones that we will make and agree to? Locke had this idea, and it rests on a fantasy of the Americas as if the Americas were unoccupied and uninhabited, which was not at all the case. But in the beginning all the world was America. People lived in this state of nature peacefully, and then they agreed to erect a government to protect private property. For Locke, natural rights, the most important of those rights was the right to

2:12own property. If I have some things and I have made them, I built myself a boat. I made myself a house. These things are mine, and you can't just take them, and that all government then rests in Locke's view. The first among these natural rights, which is the right to your property, which also meant for Jefferson in the Declaration of Independent, the right to your life in the right to be free. You had life, liberty, property, and happiness, the pursuit of happiness, which is Locke had written about life liberty, and property, and Jefferson wrote about life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, which more beautiful. But there are these inalienable rights.

2:50Imagine that there were no government, what would be the rights that we were just born with? Well, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That's where the idea of natural rights comes from. The idea then of political equality that we're all born equal, a lot of Syrians would say that comes from Christianity. From the idea that in the eyes of God, we're all born equal. We all are equally depraved, depending on your point of view, or equally innocent, and that we live a journey through life from sin to salvation, but that our essential quality as humans is one of equality. You can think about the Locke notion of a state of nature. Historians talk about a social contract. The Locke imagines that governments are formed on the basis of such a contract. We're all

3:33born equal. We are endowed by our creator with inalienable rights, lifter and happiness. Then what? Well, and then we consent to be governed and that's where popular sovereignty comes in. You couldn't just appear on that island and say, I am the king of all of you. The people on that island would have to decide who among them should be the ruler, and that there would even be laws would be subject to those people's approval, or have to ratify somehow that notion of rule. [MUSIC]