Hobbes or Locke?

[GuidoHunter]

Originally Posted by esupin

However, times have changed, and I think the US government can be looked at in a more Hobbesian point of view, so who knows.

Uh, how? Our Bill of Rights is a list of inalienable rights that the government can't touch, not freedoms that the government delegated to us. Our laws serve to protect those rights from others. If the people thought that the government controlled our rights and wasn't protecting them, they would ditch that government.

And chicken, the societies about which I was talking (pretty much all band/village/chiefdom/state societies that I can think of dating from thousands of years ago to the present) selected their leader willingly.

Sure there are some societies who didn't have a contractual agreement between ruler and subjects, and Hobbes was most certainly right in his situation, but it's too much of a stretch to apply that generally where Locke's ideas are much more fitting.

--Guido

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