The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great

by Ben Shapiro

According to Locke, then, the formation of a government requires the exercise of consent—or, alternatively, the behavior of the government in accordance with natural law, for example a government’s willingness to protect natural rights. The goal of law is to preserve freedom, not to trade freedom away for security as Hobbes would have suggested: “the end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom: for in all the states of created beings capable of laws, where there is no law, there is no freedom.”25 Locke suggested a republic of checks and balances as the key to creating such a government. Government, he stated, required two separate powers: the legislative and the executive. Montesquieu (1689–1755) would later set down the more well-known balance of powers enshrined in the American Constitution: legislative, executive, and judicial.