The influence of religion as a system of authority and law.
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John Locke was an English philosopher. Locke is considered the first of the British empiricists, but is equally important to social contract theory. his ideas had enormous influence on the development of epistemology and political philosophy, and he is widely regarded as one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers, classical republicans, and contributors to liberal theory. his writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. this influence is reflected in the American Declaration of Independence. Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin for modern conceptions of identity and "the self", figuring prominently in the later works of philosophers such as David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant. Locke was the first philosopher to define the self through a continuity of "consciousness". he also postulated that the mind was a "blank slate" or "tabula rasa"; that is, contrary to Cartesian or Christian philosophy, Locke maintained that people are born without innate ideas, and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience derived by sense perception.
The effects of the GI Bill after World War II were enormous. Millions of returning veterans were able to purchase housing and receive a college education. Both of these effects heavily impacted the American economy.
National Prohibition in the US was repealed because 74% of the voters had come to believe that it failed in its purpose but also created enormous and serious problems.
Until it was repealed, in 1933. Even then it kept on backfiring: it gave an enormous boost to organized crime, which of course is still with us.