From one of my posts on the RI debate board.

Speaking of intellectual reads, I just finished Locke's second treatise on Government. I really liked it. His idea of the state of nature is really similar to early Israel. Every man did what is right in his own eyes.

He frequently makes the point in there that when men join together to form a government (what he calls a commonwealth) they do not give that government the right to willfully take their own or other's lifes or to take property without consent because that is not a right they individually possess in their natural state. Our society has drifted from the idea that your life is not your own to take but is at God's disposal. And now that we've justified suicide we're getting/at to the point were folks taking another's life is being justified toom i.e. abortion, Terri Schiavo, etc..

Does that make sense?