In the Two Treatises of Government, John Locke defended the claim that men are by nature free and equal against claims that God had made all people naturally subject to a monarch. In the state of nature, every man has the right to life, liberty, and property. Locke believes that natural laws have shaped man. These natural laws are moral truths that apply to all people. The basis of Locke's rights originates from his theory of natural rights and rationality. Natural rights are inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property. Reason requires recognition that others have the same rights. In the state of nature, the inalienable rights are secured and respected. In a natural state, all human beings are perfectly equal.
America was founded on the philosophy of John Locke. At the time of independence, the founding fathers found, in Locke’s philosophy, new moral and philosophical grounds for the newly established country. The internal inconsistency and vagueness in Locke’s natural rights philosophy were overlooked. Its impacts are visible in contemporary times in the form of abortion rights, burgeoning government, immigration, tax onslaught, international wars, and political polarization.
Locke espouses a state of nature where people are free and equal. In this state, the law of nature or reason guides humans not to harm others in their life, liberty, and property. From this state of nature, Locke derives his theory of natural rights, which precede the commonwealth and civil society. One major criticism was raised by Rousseau, who believes that the state of nature isn’t an objective reality. Locke has overlooked human intrinsic traits such as pride, envy, or even fear of others. One contradiction in Locke’s theory is its ambiguity about the supremacy of laws. He derived his natural rights theory from Christian theology. Christian theology holds that every right belongs to God. For Locke, life, liberty, and property are inalienable rights from God.
In a state of nature, man is free to violate others' rights as he deems fit. This state of natural equality leads to a point where everyone decides everything according to their judgment. The lack of external force to direct human behavior leads to the Hobbesian natural state of war in which life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Lockean argument believes that humans use their God-gifted facility of reason to exercise their three fundamental rights –life, liberty, and property.
Free people surrender their rights to the government in exchange for benefits and services. The social contract is formed, and tacit consent is delineated between people and the government. Social contract and tacit consent are inseparable from the current modern state; its moral foundations are questionable.
A plethora of cases suggest that tacit content violates individual rights. One such example is that adherence to government authority and laws is compulsory. People who neither participate in creating those laws nor wish to consent to government authority have no right but to adhere.
Natural rights theory has unintended consequences since it was adopted in letter and spirit in the Constitution of the United States of America. The founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, incorporated the Bill of Rights based on the natural rights theory. This has served two things for the Founding Fathers. First, the Bill of Rights complements Christianity. Second, it secured people's rights on religious terms. Natural rights theory derives its basis from God and restricts human consciousness to a specific religious doctrine. God’s given rights are limited. The law of nature is God’s law. God’s system has rewards and punishments.
Locke's state of nature and subsequent natural rights are a one-sided concept where everything is forcibly associated with God. People are free and equal in their natural state and have the right to be judges, executioners, and police. People reach a social contract where they forgo their rights to achieve life, liberty, and property. People form a government among themselves to defend their natural rights. The government is the major rights violator. It restricts rights because it follows a constitution that derives its essence from natural rights, which are inevitably linked to the state of nature. If anyone does not comply with a specific religious theory, the government has the right to violate his/her rights.
To cap it all, Locke’s natural rights theory and state of nature have given direction to the Founding Fathers of America. It helped them to accommodate their religious beliefs with a secular state.
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