Consistent universalism implies world government that Locke refused to endorse.

Evidence

Locke’s universalist ambition is vulnerable to the charge that it is naive, deceptive, perhaps even manipulative, in obscuring, brushing aside, our profound particularities, whether of culture, ethnicity, religion, gender, or class. In his own time and terms, there were three patent vulnerabilities. First, the logic of universalizability, as Kant would see, points to a world state. If the relations between individuals in nature are insecure, and require agreed and competent adjudication, so do relations between states. But Locke took for granted mutually competitive states, which remain in a state of nature one with another, and hence potentially or actually in a state of war. — , Second Treatise of Government and A…, 54

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The tension is structural: the same insecurity argument that founds the state logically demands an umpire above states, and Locke simply stops the argument at the border.
• SEED: An essay on how every universalist political theory has an unexamined stopping point — the sovereign, the nation, the federation — and what that silence protects.
• XREF: connects to: Locke regarded non-arbitrary law as enlarging rather than constraining freedom — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 212; Universalist theories of political order had to be rejected entirely. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 26; Universal civilization advocates demand Western domination they refuse to endorse (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Locke regarded non-arbitrary law as enlarging rather than constraining freedom #complicates (0.90) — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 212
• Universalist theories of political order had to be rejected entirely. #complicates (0.90) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 26
• Universal civilization advocates demand Western domination they refuse to endorse #complicates (0.90)
• Liberal universalism has long coexisted with justifying empire #complicates (0.90)