In the modern era this battle was waged against the royal absolutism of the Stuarts in Britain, the Bourbons in France and the Habsburgs on various European thrones. In the seventeenth century, Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke presented a principled case that monarchs don’t have a natural right to rule, and that their right to govern was conditional on them protecting individuals’ rights to life, liberty and property. If they did not respect those rights, the people had the right to dispose of their rulers. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the American Revolution of 1776 were
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