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The state does not create or grant rights. Free people have rights, quite apart from any government. The US Constitution recognizes rights we already have and

The state does not create or grant rights. Free people have rights, quite apart from any government. The US Constitution recognizes rights we already have and constitutes a government whose primary purpose is to protect those rights. Most of the US Constitution is about trying to make sure that the government does not infringe on these rights. It's a constant struggle.

lapcat 3y ago
> During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man. > To this war of every man against every man, this also in consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues. > No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death: and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Thomas Hobbes, "Leviathan"
- tomohawk 3y ago
  The 20th century is a stark repudiation of hobbes.
  - lapcat 3y ago
    How so?
    - tomohawk 3y ago
      It was the countries that put the state first that killed millions of people - the fascists in Germany and Italy, the communists in Russia and China, and so on. Who stood up to them? It would be a much darker world without the one major country that is based on the idea that the government serves at the pleasure of the people, to protect the rights that they are naturally born with, and that the government has no other purpose than that.
      - lapcat 3y ago
        > It was the countries that put the state first that killed millions of people - the fascists in Germany and Italy, the communists in Russia and China, and so on. Who stood up to them? This is a rather bizarre, ahistorical interpretation, because the communist Soviet Union fought against Germany in WW2 and indeed was an ally of the US. Likewise with communist China against Japan in WW2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-American_Cooperative_Organization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-American_Cooperative_Orga... In any case, I didn't intend to defend the whole of Hobbes's Leviathan. But I don't think there's any reason to believe that anarchy ("the state of nature") is any better. And remember that Leviathan was written during the English Civil War.

lapcat 3y ago

> During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man. > To this war of every man against every man, this also in consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues. > No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death: and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Thomas Hobbes, "Leviathan"

tomohawk 3y ago
The 20th century is a stark repudiation of hobbes.
- lapcat 3y ago
  How so?
  - tomohawk 3y ago
    It was the countries that put the state first that killed millions of people - the fascists in Germany and Italy, the communists in Russia and China, and so on. Who stood up to them? It would be a much darker world without the one major country that is based on the idea that the government serves at the pleasure of the people, to protect the rights that they are naturally born with, and that the government has no other purpose than that.
    - lapcat 3y ago
      > It was the countries that put the state first that killed millions of people - the fascists in Germany and Italy, the communists in Russia and China, and so on. Who stood up to them? This is a rather bizarre, ahistorical interpretation, because the communist Soviet Union fought against Germany in WW2 and indeed was an ally of the US. Likewise with communist China against Japan in WW2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-American_Cooperative_Organization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-American_Cooperative_Orga... In any case, I didn't intend to defend the whole of Hobbes's Leviathan. But I don't think there's any reason to believe that anarchy ("the state of nature") is any better. And remember that Leviathan was written during the English Civil War.