George C. Wallace and His Depiction of Freedom vs The Enlightenment Thinkers

Voting for president of the United States is a very big concern. Americans vote for their president elect on several different categories, campaign platform, personal beliefs, Democrat or Republican Party, and in the earlier years, whether they were from the North or the South. One such person was George C. Wallace. Wallace campaigned in favor of segregation, but was he really for segregation, or did he just believe that the government was stepping on state’s rights?

John Locke liked freedom, he thought that freedom was good for the government. “...(W)e must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose [manage] of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature….” (Doc A) This states that Locke wants freedom but their comes consequences. To have this freedom men needed to create a government with a legislature and an executive. Locke’s main idea was people had rights.

These rights included life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He also believed in having a limited government. His ideas had a great impact on the U.S. government and the Declaration of Independence. John Locke’s influence was evident in the Declaration of Independence when it said, “…that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” The colonists believed they had these unalienable rights, therefore the Americans established a government where people would be guaranteed these rights. The Americans believed that Britain was “deaf to the voice of justice.” Britain refused to respond to the outcries of the colonists. John Locke believed selfishness would always get in the way of acting morally, and Britain’s selfishness was blinding them from the suffering the colonists faced. The Americans developed a government that would listen to the people and let them have a

“Whenever the power that is put in any hands for the government of the people, and the protection of our properties, is applied to other ends, and made use of to impoverish, harass or subdue them to the arbitrary and irregular commands of those that have it; there it presently becomes tyranny, whether those that thus use it are one or many”

George C. Wallace was born in Clio, Alabama, on August 25, 1919. After law school and military service, he embarked on a career as a judge and local politician. He served four terms as Alabama governor, from the 1960s through the 1980s, and ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. presidency three times. Despite his later efforts to revise his public image, Wallace is remembered for his strong support of racial segregation in the '60s. He died in Montgomery, Alabama, on September 13,

John Locke published “Two Treatise [essays] of Government” in 1689. In these tow documents Locke proposed that every person had the rights of life, liberty and property. The government cannot take these unalienable rights away unless they have a reason. Locke also stated that the

1. Without government, as among our Indians. 2. Under governments wherein the will of every one has a just influence, as is the case in England in a slight degree, and in our states in a great one. 3. Under governments of force, as is the case in all other monarchies and in most of the other republics… It is a government of wolves over sheep… The second state has a great deal of good in it. The mass of mankind under that enjoys a precious degree of liberty and happiness. It has it’s [sic] evils too: the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject… I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.

Liberty and freedom was an important part of Locke’s ideas on government.In Locke’s second treatise on civil government (1690), he writes that governments should protect people’s natural rights. “For the society can never lose the

John Locke presenting many ideas relating to Government, one strong belief he possessed was the fact that a good democratic Government had to exist through the permission of the people being ruled. Seeing that people are born natural free and have control over their political and social state of mind, they had to surrender some of their rights to the government for that government

Without Locke’s influence our founders may not have given up these rights. Or been able to expand their minds to such an extent to free this nation and themselves from the tyranny

John Locke’s political philosophy claimed that men are by nature free and equal. This went against claims that supported that God had made all people naturally subject to a monarch. He argued that all people have certain rights. These rights include the right to life, liberty, and property, which have a foundation separate of the laws of society. His reasoning behind this was that the government exists with the consent of the people so it should protect the people’s rights and promote the public good.

Locke believed the people were enabled to natural rights. These rights are life, liberty, and the protection of their property.

A fundamental principle of Locke’s book is that of liberty, where he defines it as “man being free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule” (§22). Evidently, Locke dubbed liberty as a dominant notion which should be bestowed on every individual, seeing as it is a right. Moreover, Locke highlighted the way in which humans should be free, which he refers to as “the law of nature”, a state where humans are permitted to determine their moral code. All in all, Locke’s concept of liberty has shaped much of society today, reinforcing why he is referred to as the “father of Classical Liberalism”.

Locke’s main discussions of freedom took place in his work entitled Two Treatises on Government. These views were built upon the view of a natural state in which every individual maintained a state of natural freedom. In this natural state, each individual was free to make decisions and choose actions without any constraints. Locke felt that under this view every individual should maintain equal and independent and refrain from harming one another. However, the main problem in this concept of freedom is that fact that an individual’s free will can be constrained by the actions of another.

“The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to