I think what you are missing is that the United States had placed the Constitution (theoretically, anyway) into the role of absolute monarch in the Hobbesian description.
The defense of Locke has much in common with every other Objectivist assertion. There is not a snowball's chance in Hell that it will ever be tested in the real world, and therefore the fantasy can be cherished forever.
But even taking it at face value, it runs up against a major problem in the context of claiming that God does not exist: If God does not exist, from where do Lockean rights originate?
In the Hobbesian viewpoint, one does not even need to consider God in the equation. Rights are those things without which man reverts to the natural state of war. So while one could ascribe to a Hobbesian viewpoint and be atheist, I do not see how one can consistently ascribe to the Lockean viewpoint without a Creator to invest the human being with rights. Indeed, the Declaration of Independence does espouse a Lockean theory (one that is, by the way, perfectly consistent with the Hobbesian theory) and explicitly names the Creator as the source of those rights.
"I think what you are missing is that the United States had placed the Constitution (theoretically, anyway) into the role of absolute monarch in the Hobbesian description."
The Constitution, as far as it is consistent with objective liberty, does not presume to DIRECT the activities of individuals (like the Hobbesian monarch), but rather to establish a government of NEGATIVE OBLIGATIONS of the Lockean sort. Unfortunately, some of the loopholes allowed by the document, as well as regulatory powers including federal control over interstate commerce, have permitted statists to subvert the Constitution's purpose over a succession of generations.
The Constitution is not a perfect document (though by all means better than what any other society has had to offer), and can be refined to a greater extent, as I emphasize in "The Betrayal of Checks and Balances," the first article in my series of treatises on the political theory of Laissez-Faire Meritocracy.
http://solohq.com/Articles/Stolyarov/The_Betrayal_of_Checks_and_Balances.shtml "The defense of Locke has much in common with every other Objectivist assertion. There is not a snowball's chance in Hell that it will ever be tested in the real world, and therefore the fantasy can be cherished forever. "
My theory of Laissez-Faire Meritocracy in fact offers a mechanism by which the Lockean ideal can be brought into practice. Read the series if you wish to learn more.
http://solohq.com/Articles/Stolyarov/Meritocracy_Cleansing_the_Smear.shtml http://solohq.com/Articles/Stolyarov/The_Protectorate_The_Ultimate_Check.shtml http://solohq.com/Articles/Stolyarov/The_Functions_and_Mechanisms_of_the_Protectorate.shtml "But even taking it at face value, it runs up against a major problem in the context of claiming that God does not exist: If God does not exist, from where do Lockean rights originate?"
Natural Law, which, by Occam's Razor and the Identity Principle, is far more acceptable as a first cause than God (which is just one step further back on the road of infinite regress that the entire concept of a creator entity initiates). I am inclined to favor the existence of a static universe in which natural laws function and have always functioned in the same definite, fathomable manner. The word "cause" is inapplicable to them, as they are required to exist for the very concept of cause to have any meaning. It is from these natural laws that Locke was able to derive individual rights, merely giving them the name "God," as philosophy and civilization in general had not yet evolved the concept of atheism in Locke's time (atheism originated during the Late Enlightenment, with Thomas Paine as one of its forerunners). Locke was far closer to a Deist than to a mainstream Christian. He believed in a Deity that set all natural laws in motion and, by the nature of his design, established the requirement that human beings have rights.