Ideas Change The World, by Daniel Sheridan

Wars usually make the news, and war movies dominate cinema. That’s because they are “exciting.” Bullets zipping across the battlefield and men storming the beaches of Normandy inspire thrilling musical scores. But ideas, unlike war, are born of contemplation, mature through discussion, and ultimately make lasting change.

#OTD, August 29, 1632, one of the philosophers of the Glorious Revolution, John Locke, was born.

Locke wrote “Two Treatises of Government,” a work inspired by the Glorious Revolution. Here, Locke espoused that all men have a natural right to life, liberty, and property and established a government to protect these natural rights. The people, Locke said, are the true sovereigns. Locke’s theory came to be known as the popular rights theory.

About twenty percent of the quotations found in the Founding Fathers’ writings between 1760 through 1805 came from writers like Locke and Montesquieu. Jefferson restates Locke’s words and ideas in the famous first two paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence.