PHI 406 - Reading Response 2

In his writing “Second Treatise of Government,” John Locke attempts to outline how governments are formed using Social Contract Theory. He discusses that many governments are formed with a leader, who he likens to a father, noting that the first leader of a group of people is usually the father of the family, and that it is he (the father) who makes the rules that the rest of the family must follow, allowing for a sovereign ruler to take the place of a father on a grander scale. He goes on to describe that the only true government is formed when a group of men consent to being governed. Governance doesn’t just happen. He states that a “freeman” has no reason to be subjected to the laws of a given territory unless by consent, and that he can, at any time, move on to a different land and/or form a different government if he so chooses. But this, he states, is not applicable to our progeny. Locke states:

A child is born subject to no country or government. He is under his father’s tuition and authority, till he comes to age of discretion; then he is a freeman, at liberty what government he will put himself under, what body politic he will unite himself to: for is an Englishman’s son, born in France, be at liberty, and may do so, it is evident there is no tie upon him by his father’s being a subject of (England); nor is he bound up by any compact of his ancestors. (p. 63)

This is a very different outlook than the one we have currently. In America, a child born within our borders is considered as having American citizenship, thus being subject to our laws and privileges, even if the parents are not citizens. Currently, the Trump Administration is dealing with an industry built around pregnant women who come to the United States just to give birth to their babies. Upon birth on American soil, these infants are granted American citizenship automatically, even if their parents are not citizens themselves. This is being called “birth tourism” by the press.

Locke would not have agreed with this kind of transfer of citizenship, stating, “Nothing can make any man (a subject of that commonwealth) but his actually entering into it by positive engagement, and express promise and compact” (p. 64). To Locke, this idea that non-Americans can fly to the United States, give birth within our borders, and the newborn child will automatically receive American citizenship was ludicrous. To him, there could not be citizenship without government, and government couldn’t exist without consent from the people who formed the government, consent that a child cannot give, “else this original compact, whereby he with others incorporates into one society, would signify nothing and be no compact” (p. 56).

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Grade: 10/10
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