On self-preservation & justification for pre-emptive war

the author | 18 Dec 05 | Thomas L. Rosser

[fifthvirginia]

It might surprise some that justification for pre-emptive war is found in the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration, got his ideas on pre-emptive war from John Locke's "Second Treatise on Government" and used them in the Declaration to justify the American Revolution.

In his work, Locke argued against despotic power or "Absolute, Arbitrary Power" because being absolute and arbitrary it can be used to "take away" the lives of those subject to it. This makes despotic power opposed to self-preservation or "the preservation of Mankind," which Locke maintained was "the fundamental Law of Nature."

Because this Law was the "will of God," Locke argued that each human being was duty "bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his Station willfully." In other words, humans cannot abandon their duty of self-preservation, because this would virtually amount to suicide.

Therefore everyone has the obligation to avoid subjecting themselves to despotic or "Absolute, Arbitrary Power" since it renders their own limited individual power to preserve themselves ineffective. Locke applied these ideas to any absolute sovereign when he said: "It being out of a man's power so to submit himself to another, as to give him a liberty to destroy him; God and Nature never allowed a Man so to abandon himself, as to neglect his own Preservation: And since a man cannot take away his own Life, neither can he give another power to take it." Therefore, argued Locke, people should watch their government carefully and if it demonstrated by "a long train of Actings" or "Pretences of one Kind and Actions of another" that it was headed toward despotic power, the people had a duty to get rid of it — by force if necessary — and replace it with one containing safeguards against despotism.

Jefferson put these ideas to work in the Declaration of Independence when he wrote: "But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them [the people] under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security." By using "Design" — a favorite word of Locke — to describe the despotic intentions of the British government, Jefferson acknowledged that Americans were not yet suffering from "absolute Despotism." However, they were still duty-bound to "throw" the British government "off" because of the numerous actions leading to despotism committed by king and Parliament listed in the Declaration.

As is seen in Locke's arguments on the "State of War," the logic of these self-preservation ideas applies to governments other than one's own.

http://fifthvirginia.blogspot.com/