> The social contract theory is a just-so story. I find this (the liberal employment of just-so stories) to be practically a defining trait of enlightenment-er

> The social contract theory is a just-so story. I find this (the liberal employment of just-so stories) to be practically a defining trait of enlightenment-era political thinking. Happy coincidence that their application resulted in systems of government strong enough to survive competition, though I do worry that that had more to do with other factors than with the benefits of liberal democracy, which may be more like peacock feathers than something enduringly fit in a changing environment, and that, especially with a changing technological landscape, the March of Democracy may end up being rather less long-lived than we might have hoped. I gather some cold-war thinkers had similar concerns. That turned out to be OK, more or less, I suppose, for generous values of "OK"—Russia didn't exactly shift toward liberalism afterward the fall of the Soviet Union, for one thing.