Locke, Revolution and the Midterm Elections
As we learned throughout the last week talking about Locke. Many his of political ideas shaped the way our government was formed way back in the 18th century by the founding fathers. His ideas on the natural rights of life liberty and property are directly used in our Declaration of Independence among other of his ideas. His idea of a social contract where people will willingly come together to form a society to protect these rights is another prominent theme that shaped American government. Once of his most important ideas pertaining to the social contract is his ideas on revolution, where people should have the right to amend their government through a new legislature and government structure.
The midterm elections are a great example of how Locke’s ideas on revolution and social contract still are quite prevalent today. When Obama was elected he took with him a democratic House of Representatives as well as a democratic Senate. I remember thinking when this happened that it would take years for the democrats to lose their majority in either house, with the republicans taking so much heat during the Bush Administration . In reality quite the opposite happened yesterday and the Democrats lost their majority to the Republicans, giving them a healthy majority of their own now. The Republicans also gained a lot of ground in the Senate.
These results are Locke’s theory at work when the Democrats took control of the whole legislative branch and executive from the Republicans, they formed a new contract with the people. However, these midterm elections showed that the people though they had not upheld this contract between them, and they responded with sweeping reforms. Reforms which are consistent with Locke’s view that when the government violates their side of the contract that people should be able to peacefully reform the legislature and form a new contract with a new purpose with this new legislature. It would not surprise me, due to the extent of the midterm election results, if the Republicans make even more advances in the next election, solidifying the contract between government and the people, something that the Democrats, by not getting much done, could not do for their two years of power.