>Hobbes gets a bad rap because it sounds pretty horrible sitting in the peace and comfort of the 21st century. But we have to remember that the general attitude

>Hobbes gets a bad rap because it sounds pretty horrible sitting in the peace and comfort of the 21st century. But we have to remember that the general attitude of "I better kill him before he kills me" (a kind of fear) has been the dominant cause of violence for most of human history. Only naive Europeans, mostly western and the Anglophone countries, still believe this. The rest of the world laugh at us and our political leaders who don't have a backbone. Just look at the situation in the Ukrainian border. And your notion that the use of Violence is related to fear and not power speaks volumes. A quote from someone who understands this really well: “To the meaningless French idealisms: Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, we propose the three German realities: Infantry, Cavalry, and Artillery.” — Prince Bernhard von Bülow