Thomas G West

This book provides a complete overview of the American Founders' political theory, covering natural rights, natural law, state of nature, social compact, consent, and the policy implications of these ideas. The book is intended as a response to the current scholarly consensus, which holds that the Founders' political thought is best understood as an amalgam of liberalism, republicanism, and perhaps other traditions. West argues that, on the contrary, the foundational documents overwhelmingly point to natural rights as the lens through which all politics is understood. The book explores in depth how the Founders' supposedly republican policies on citizen character formation do not contradict but instead complement their liberal policies on property and economics. Additionally, the book shows how the Founders' embraced other traditions in their politics, such as common law and Protestantism.

Both conservatives and liberals often misunderstand the American Founders' approach to poverty and welfare. Conservatives tend to assume that poor relief in early America was entirely private, while liberals generally think the poor were entirely neglected until the 20th century. But America has always had laws providing for the poor. The real difference between the Founders' welfare policies and today's is over how, not whether, government should help those who are in need. The question was and remains: What policies help the poor, and what policies harm them? The ultimate goal for the Founders was lifting the poor out of poverty as quickly as possible and preventing permanent dependence.

This essay will show that Locke’s teaching on the law of nature is not based on divine revelation, or a juridical doctrine of individual rights, or self-ownership, or self-preservation, or reasoning from premises that are not rooted in the empirical world. I will argue, on the contrary, that the real ground is found in his understanding of the conditions of human happiness. This conclusion is far from evident on the surface of Locke’s writings. Locke draws his reader into an amazingly complex line of reasoning, scattered up and down in several of his books, leading finally to the real basis of his teaching on the law of nature. Locke engages the reader in a dialogue, in which initially plausible arguments are put forward, then implicitly questioned, leading to new arguments, which again are questioned, and so on. Locke says that “long and sometimes intricate deductions of reason” are necessary to discover the law of nature. Locke writes treatises, not Platonic dialogues. Nevertheless, a dialogical thread will take us from one of Locke’s books to another, until we put together all the relevant passages to show the complete picture of his argument.