A right wing blogger at the John Locke Foundation made a bit of news this week by posting a racist picture of Obama. I’m not writing about the racism, which is a bit like reporting the proverbial dog bites man (though, it would appear dogs bite men much less frequently than right wingers utter racial slurs). Besides, we are being trained to understand that it is impolite to notice racism, as it is unseemly political correctness and an insult to people who are just expressing their opinions, to which all of us are entitled, and about which right wingers must not be criticized.
No, I write not to condemn the racist, but to speak on behalf of poor John Locke, who, being dead these many years cannot defend himself nor assert rights over the use of his name. Anyone can commandeer it, for whatever purpose they choose. The right has a tendency to appropriate to itself, sort of by eminent domain, the names and reputation of the long dead, be it ever so unlikely that the person in question would approve. Witness the Cato Institute. Who knows, maybe if poor Cato was transplanted to this place and era, and was allowed to acclimate himself, he would become a uber-libertarian, though one suspects the acclimatization process would have to involve handing him huge sums of money to get him in the proper frame of mind. But I confess, I can’t speak with any authority on Cato. Being more familiar with Tom Paine and Martin Luther King I can say with confidence that their attempts to appropriate those notables would be actionable, were not the victims already dead.
As to poor John Locke, again, were he transplanted to this era, and properly cultivated, he might twist his philosophy into support for corporate oligarchs in line with the right wing funded institute that now bears his name. But certain things must give us pause. He was the philosopher that laid the intellectual groundwork for our own revolution, which was never, at least expressly, about preserving the rights of the ruling class. I haven’t read the Second Treatise on Government for a long time, but my recollection is that there was some stuff in there about property rights that don’t line up with right wing thinking. And who can say, in this time of purchased privilege, that this Lockean prescription to the legislature is in favor with the right?
They are to govern by promulgated established laws, not to be varied in particular cases, but to have one rule for rich and poor, for the favourite at court, and the country man at plough.
Perhaps they figure the requirement is satisfied so long as both rich and poor are barred from sleeping under bridges.
But putting politics aside, Locke was instrumental in ushering in the bygone Age of Reason. I realize the idea of using reason while thinking is considered quaint these days, but there’s really not much left of Locke if you take the reason out. If a group seeks to confer an endorsement on itself from a long dead person, they should consider whether he or she, properly brought up to speed (in Locke’s case, educated on the scientific and political events of the last three centuries ) would agree with them. Would Locke, for instance, abandon reason and reject climate science, as does the foundation that bears his name? We can never know, but I’d say the chances are as low as those that a reincarnated Tom Paine would appear on the Glenn Beck show, where, in death, he is so often enlisted to support positions that even Edmund Burke would disown.
