John Locke on Trust and Government (2018)

To most historians of the 17th Century Stuart era, John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government rationalized the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

At least one historian, Peter Laslett, disagrees. To Laslett, Locke’s texts were instead a call for revolutions yet to come. Not only did Locke’s philosophy call for our 1776 revolution, it reaches out to us today . . . but with a twist. Where Locke gave little attention to the nuts and bolts of how a community goes about restoring free government after its dissolution, our Framers provided the solution in Article V of their Constitution.

Locke didn’t conceptualize free government as either a contract or compact. If governed and governors are equal and interchangeable, as they must be in a republic, trust in one another is essential.

He reasoned that “trust” was the best term to describe the relationship between the sovereign people and the government of their creation. It is simply in the nature of a personal assurance, a fiduciary trust of governors to keep within their enumerated limits to achieve the ends of any government, which is the good of the governed. The people themselves decide if their governmental trustees violate their trust. To remain interchangeable, those who wield this power, fellow citizens all, must not develop an interest distinct from that of the community.

The community grants powers for attaining certain ends and no more. If the ends are neglected, or power is put to other purposes, government is dissolved and the authority devolves back to the people/community. “Governments,” wrote Locke, “are dissolved . . . when the legislative, or the Prince (executive), either of them act contrary to their Trust.”

Once trust is broken, that’s it. Who trusts anyone after they broke their word? Is the community to be a battered wife who keeps going back to her husband in the full knowledge that his promises are empty and his abuse will continue?

Locke’s dissolution due to violation of trust doesn’t mean the government folds up shop and everyone goes home. It means their subsequent actions are no longer legitimate or binding on the community. On closer reflection, we see every day what Locke had in mind. How many laws are outside the limits of our Constitution? Every violation of Natural Law or the supreme law of the land harms our respect for statutory law and especially non-legislative regulations that never deserved respect or obedience in the first place.

When trust is substituted in this way for either a contract or compact, Constitutional change is sanctioned. It secures the sovereignty of the people who have the perpetual power to cashier their governors and remodel their government.

The great danger to free government occurs when the people recognize a breach of trust and do nothing about it. Rather than put our governors on notice of dissolution, that trust is at an end, people are more inclined to be patient and endure accumulated outrages. Locke wrote that if the governors resist reforms, then the people cease to be a community and a State of Nature is at hand, with all of its disadvantages. Should the State of Nature return, then there is no final judge here on earth, and the ultimate appeal can only be to God . . . in revolution. A real mess.

But we needn’t accept as inevitable the bloody conclusions so common to republics IF we are willing to call out and correct violations on a regular basis through an Annual Article V Convention. Open Deep State criminality is less a disease and more a symptom of accelerating corruption that began long ago. One breach of trust followed another. The Deep State criminals are brazen; they flip off Congress and dare the nation to put them down. This is our sorry condition, in which a government of others not only recognizes no limits and acts contrary to its purposes, it functions under a separate set of unspoken standards that immunize them from the law.

To Article V COS opponents, to those who believe a regular review of the people’s sovereignty at an Annual Article V Convention can only cause turmoil, John Locke wrote that when magistrates openly violate the trust put in them, the cynic may as well say that honest men may not oppose robbers because it may occasion bloodshed. If any mischief ensues, it is not the fault of he who defends his own right, but he who assaults his neighbors. If the innocent man must quietly quit all he has for the sake of peace, what kind of peace can there be which consists only in violence and rapine maintained for the benefit of the robbers and oppressors?

In 2022 the law is what those hostile to our Constitution say it is.

Voting alone is insufficient effort to kick the Deep State to the curb.

We had a covenant as the consensual governed. We elected leaders to represent us. They created a government of bureaucracy. When we figured out what happened they decided to replace us with people who don’t know about being the consensual governed.

3 posted on 06/13/2022 3:15:04 PM PDT by webheart (I thought I was helping by getting vaccinated but they say I didn’t help at all. )

“The American Revolution began long before the war commenced.
The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people.
This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments,
and affections of the people was the real American Revolution.”
~John Adams

So true. By 1776, reconciliation with the UK was impossible.

We must use the power vested in us, the sovereign people, to right our ship of state.

I’ll add that this failure of trust goes both ways, and what we have now is a situation sthat will resolve with force of violence. The government is superior, and it will use force to subjugate the people.

Laws, arrests, prosecution, and jail by men with badges and judges with robes. It’ll be done “all legal like.” Just like the Jan 6 Commission and all the toehr corruption the government perpetrates. it isn;t going to fix itself, and it will not tolerate being disrespected.

Article V once a year? We can’t even get one done after 2 centuries! The Balanced budget amendment is pretty close to the required 34. Let us start with that. Once all the Chicken Littles see that the sky did not fall then we can have another.

9 posted on 06/15/2022 5:22:36 AM PDT by Nateman (If Mohammad was not the Anti Christ he sure did come in as a strong second.)

I went into more detail here:

https://articlevblog.com/2016/04/toward-an-annual-article-v-state-amendments-convention/

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