America’s Philosopher posits that Americans in the 20th century weaponized John Locke for their own ideological ends and read Locke into the American founding. This has given Locke an outsized importance as a means to an ideological end.
The true dividing lines on the right lie on the terrain of American history—the Civil War, Reconstruction, World War I, and the Civil Rights Era—but the conservative establishment's narrative about these topics has grown stale.