Here’s something I say in "Natural Law, Our Constitution, and Our Democracy,’ MODERN AMERICA AND THE LEGACY OF THE FOUNDING (ed. Pestritto and West, 2007):
We postmodern conservatives want to restore, agains the excesses of Locke, a realistic sense of our grateful dependence on our natural limitations and our openness to God. But we can also see that there’s something true about Locke’s defense of the free person against those who would reduce us to merely parts of some political community (or "cave") or parts of nature. To be postmodern is to reflect on the real but limited and distorted truth of modern thought.
. . . in Locke’s ‘Of Property, the frequent references to God disppear once money is invented—with the consent of us all. We — or the industrious and rational among us — in our freedom invent our way out of our dependence on natural and divine limits . . . . We teach ourselves, through our free work, that there are not any limitations to our acquistion that we might not overcome. God is also replaced by the wise and godlike prince, who is rational and industrious enough to protect the honest industry of the rest of us against oppression. Money and good government — both instituted among men by men — are the twin foundations of human progress . . . . Locke’s SECOND TREATISE might be called ‘Human Inventions and the Historical Progress of Free Men (or Free Individuals) Against God and Nature.’"
