John Locke Question?

Question

What persuasive arguments does John Locke make that might counter the claim that his idea of government to protect "rights" is just another ideology?

Answer 1

That the taking of private property is a right to the stronger in absence of a state government that is willing to protect the right to property by rightful means, whatever definition is given for that, is a crime. The state government would then make common or general that which is deemed right and wrong and crime. It is an idea for which ideology has as its subject. Ideology is a science, not a subset for all possibility.

The Will is positive, the Judgment is negative.

Second Treatise of Civil Government John Locke (1690)


CHAP. XVIII. Of Tyranny.


'Sec.199. AS usurpation is the exercise of power, which another hath a right to; so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which no body can have a right to. And this is making use of the power any one has in his hands, not for the good of those who are under it, but for his own private separate advantage. When the governor, however intitled, makes not the law, but his will, the rule; and his commands and actions are not directed to the preservation of the properties of his people, but the satisfaction of his own ambition, revenge, covetousness, or any other irregular passion.'


http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/politics/locke/ch18.htm

Second Treatise of Civil Government John Locke (1690)


CHAP. XVII. Of Usurpation.
Sec.197. AS conquest may be called a foreign usurpation, so usurpation is a kind of domestic conquest, with this difference, that an usurper can never have right on his side, it being no usurpation, but where one is got into the possession of what another has right to. This, so far as it is usurpation, is a change only of persons, but not of the forms and rules of the government: for if the usurper extend his power beyond what of right belonged to the lawful princes, or governors of the commonwealth, it is tyranny added to usurpation.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/politics/locke/ch17.htm