Some Thoughts from Locke

For those interested or inclined to ridicule, I am in the thick of writing my SJD dissertation. This basically means I spend many late nights over scotch considering the thoughts of better men - mainly because I am too ADD to consider their thoughts during the day. I've been told I have a flair for the dramatic, but I swear, somewhere in Africa there's a tsetse fly with an attention span longer than mine.

Most recently, I've spent my wee small hours of the morning drafting a chapter on libertarian political philosophy and how it can be used to improve many of the Federal Government's policies toward Native Americans.

My readings tonight took me to the works of John Locke and his 1689 manuscript Second Treatise of Government. In the selection below, Locke argues at length against the absolute monarchy and its attendant evil, absolute power.

Locke writes:

For he that thinks absolute power purifies men's blood, and corrects the baseness of human nature, need read but the history of this, or any other age, to be convinced to the contrary.

-John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, Sec. 92.

I find that the quote above is both inspirational and aspirational. It is inspirational in that Locke sounds like an old friend, warning against the largesse of government, rallying patriots to freedom's cause as if the British were already en route to Cambridge from Boston.

The quote is also aspirational because in the 322 years that have intervened between Locke's work and our present day, civil society has yet to reign in the scourge of absolute power - particulalry in the halls of government. As Solomon would say, nothing new under the sun.

N.B. I hope to explain later in my own research how the notion of absolute power is notoriously troublesome in the area of Federal Indian Law. The Arizona State University Law School has a helpful summary here.