The fraud of John Locke: subnational challenges to democratic theory

This chapter questions the fundamental assumptions of liberalism as the foundation of the democratic state. It accepts the superiority of the central tenets of the liberal project over other traditions in organizing a humane state, but points to its normative limitations. It argues that sub-nationalism - the primordial call of identity - often overwhelms the primacy of individualism. Groups that coalesce under the recessive genes of religion, ethnicity, race, language, and other discriminatory markers, are easier to mobilize against the higher and nobler principles of democracy. In most democracies, voters tend to assert these identity biases over the greater public good, or even their own best interests. The most serious threat to democracy therefore is neither class nor economic station, although these are without doubt extremely relevant. It is sub-nationalism, or even nationalism, that poses the greatest peril to John Locke's concepts of freedom, individualism, and the liberal state.