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One can argue that Locke represents a wrong turn, but one can't put the spilt milk back in the bottle (sorry about the mixed metaphor). It's quite possible to criticize Locke on the basis of older ideas of legitimacy, but hard to restore those older ideas to the power they once had. It's also certainly possible to speculate about whether Locke's ideas were necessary to dethrone absolutism or whether older conceptions of natural law would have served the same function and perhaps have done so better than Locke's ideas.

Locke looks a bit like a mutation of conservative anti-absolutist ideas into a form that could eventually demand and justify individualist democracy. Perhaps an unmutated form of legitimist, anti-absolutist thought could have served us better. But the Rubicon has been crossed. One certainly can't uproot Locke from the American or modern Western mind or undo the distrust of governments, rulers and hierarchies and the resistance to them.

What "the governed" wanted was not so much a sophisticated theory of rights and mutual obligations, but a source of slogans and claims that could be pitted against the power of their governors. That yesterday's governed become today's governing elite to be cast aside by others is one of the inevitable, though unforseen results of the theory.

Gottfried himself shares the truculent, "don't tread on me" spirit of today's average American, so perhaps he doesn't recognize his own character or ancestry. Maybe this is the paleo dilemma: they rely on pre-Lockean ideas to defend some unruly and tradition-based Celtic community against centralized states, unaware that those pre-Lockean ideas were as apt to be used against the intransigent Celts as against their oppressors.

Traditional monarchy may look good in comparison to contemporary democracy, but monarchs and royalists didn't lack the ability and willingness to oppress and exploit. England may have needed a restoration of older concepts of natural law, but what they got was Locke. France, Spain and Germany, which had no Locke, probaby ended up worse off than England.

You can also check out the original thread on this article or the Chronicles symposium that the was originally published in. While the question of Locke is of extreme importance in its own right, I can't resist a sneaking suspicion that for Donald Livingston Locke=Lincoln and Hume=Calhoun.

[KC Burke]

Locke looks a bit like a mutation of conservative anti-absolutist ideas into a form that could eventually demand and justify individualist democracy. Perhaps an unmutated form of legitimist, anti-absolutist thought could have served us better. But the Rubicon has been crossed. One certainly can't uproot Locke from the American or modern Western mind or undo the distrust of governments, rulers and hierarchies and the resistance to them.

What "the governed" wanted was not so much a sophisticated theory of rights and mutual obligations, but a source of slogans and claims that could be pitted against the power of their governors. That yesterday's governed become today's governing elite to be cast aside by others is one of the inevitable, though unforseen results of the theory.

One of the reasons I enjoy your posts is insightful paragraphs such as these. The desire for "slogans" and neat little logical systems to enter the public rhealm with on a daily basis never leaves some people today as well.

General distrust of philosophers' systems for practical matters is one of the halmarks of many conservatives, despite an appreciation for a life-of-the-mind. I must confess myself amongst that former category despite my interest in those topics and many posters that are obviously in those later ranks.