Ameritopia_ The Unmaking of America - Mark R. Levin [45]
Locke is not only underscoring his earlier point about man’s right to resist the illegitimate, arbitrary power of government, particularly relating to his property rights; he is going further—that is, no government, including one established by the consent of the governed, has authority to violate man’s inalienable rights.
Locke explains that the law of nature exists above all else, and all men are required to obey it, including those who hold public office. “Thus the law of Nature stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others. The rules that they make for other men’s actions, must, as well as their own and other men’s actions, be conformable to the law of Nature, i.e., to the will of God, of which that is a declaration, and the fundamental law of nature being the preservation of mankind, no human sanction can be good, or valid against it” (11, 135).
The first sentence of the Declaration encapsulates Locke’s view of the preeminence of natural law and the right to disobey and, indeed, throw off a government that abuses its power. It states, “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
EXAMPLE 2
Locke writes, “The state of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it, which obliges everyone, and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions, for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent and infinitely wise Maker; all the servants of one sovereign Master, sent into the world by His order and about His business.… And, being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of Nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for ours. Everyone as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station willfully, so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he as much as he can to preserve the rest of mankind, and not unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another” (2, 6).
The Founders embraced Locke’s vision that all men are blessed by God with inalienable rights—“the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another”—which they described this way: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” It is the job of government to preserve those rights.
EXAMPLE 3
Again, Locke explains that any government not established by the consent of the governed is illegitimate and, therefore, its laws are illegitimate. “Nor can any edict of anybody else, in what form soever conceived, or by what power soever backed, have the force and obligation of a law which has not its sanction from that legislative which the public has chosen and appointed; for without this the law could not have that which is absolutely necessary to its being a law, the consent of the society, over whom nobody can have a power to make laws but by their own consent and by authority received from them.…” (11, 134)
Nor can a government established by the consent