4.7 • 6.8K Ratings
🗓️ 20 July 2020
⏱️ 5 minutes
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0:00.0 | When John Adams and Benjamin Franklin read Thomas Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence, |
0:05.2 | they undoubtedly recognized two things. Jefferson's peerless prose and the political wisdom of the |
0:10.3 | 17th century English thinker John Locke. We still admire Jefferson's skill as a writer, |
0:15.6 | but we have lost an appreciation for Jefferson's philosophical mentor. |
0:19.6 | John Locke was born in 1632 in a small village in Somerset England. He studied at Oxford to be a |
0:25.1 | physician, but achieved fame as a political theorist. In 1690, he authored one of the most famous |
0:31.5 | political tracts in history, two treatises of government. England had just gone through a period |
0:37.5 | of great political turmoil, the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688, in which the Catholic |
0:43.2 | King James II was overthrown and replaced by a Protestant one, William of Orange. |
0:49.1 | The purpose of that revolution, which Locke supported, was not merely to substitute one |
0:53.3 | king for another, but to move power away from the monarch and place it in the hands of the people |
0:58.2 | and their elected representatives. The laws and liberties of this kingdom in Locke's view |
1:02.7 | belonged to its citizens. This was, of course, how the American rebels saw their relationship |
1:07.9 | with England. The Americans had no say in laws that the English crown and parliament were forcing |
1:12.8 | on them, and to put it mildly, they didn't like it. No taxation without representation was a |
1:18.8 | classic expression of their displeasure. But how to frame the argument so that the whole world |
1:23.8 | would understand it? Jefferson looked to Locke for inspiration and guidance, and using Locke |
1:29.3 | helped in another way. How better, Jefferson calculated to justify an American revolution |
1:34.5 | than to use the arguments that were once used to justify an English one. So, what were those |
1:40.4 | arguments? Locke posited three. First, all men are created equal. Second, certain basic rights |
1:47.9 | exist independent of government. Third, government exists to protect those rights. Let's take them in turn. |
1:55.4 | Number one, all men are created equal. Locke starts this argument at a very basic level, |
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