John Locke and his philosophy of national rights. How did it influence our government?

Question

anonymous · Answer

If u mean the US government It promoted their need for freedom from the british colonialist. It also promoted the need to end slave labor

anonymous · Answer

John Locke influenced us primarily through his concept of natural rights. He also talked about good, bad and evil governments based on how they either protect, don't protect or assault our natural rights.

Natural rights are any of those rights that we have from virtue of being a rational, sentient being. These include the rights to life, liberty and property. Jefferson would change this last one to "pursuit of happiness" because by the time Jefferson was writing, we had been evolving into a capitalist society, and the definition Locke gave for property was problematic in large part due to slavery. Property was defined by him as "any land that we have mixed our labor with", but if slaves were doing the laboring, it brought up questions of ownership. Better to be vague. 

Good governments were those who protected our natural rights. Bad governments failed to protect our rights. Evil governments assaulted our rights, or interfered with them to the point they could not function.