Tag Archives: Political Theory

How Intellectuals Cured ‘Tyrannophobia’, by James Bovard

Posted on July 27, 2020 | 1 comment

Statist intellectuals love a 17th century “giant” of political philosophy who thought that the state could do just about anything and that the people should learn to love it. From James Bovard at theamericanconservative.com:

Almost 400 years ago, English philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote a book scoffing at tyrannophobia—the “fear of being strongly governed.” This was a peculiar term that Hobbes invented in Leviathan, since civilized nations had feared tyrants for almost 2000 years at that point. But over the past 150 years, Hobbes’ totalitarianism has been defined out of existence by apologists who believe that government needs vast, if not unlimited power. Hobbes’ revival is symptomatic of the collapse of intellectuals’ respect in individual freedom.

Writing in 1651, Hobbes labeled the State as Leviathan, “our mortal God.” Leviathan signifies a government whose power is unbounded, with a right to dictate almost anything and everything to the people under its sway. Hobbes declared that it was forever prohibited for subjects in “any way to speak evil of their sovereign” regardless of how badly power was abused. Hobbes proclaimed that “there can happen no breach of Covenant on the part of the Sovereign; and consequently none of his subjects, by any pretense of forfeiture, can be freed from his subjection.”

Hobbes championed absolute impunity for rulers: “No man that hath sovereign power can justly be put to death, or otherwise in any manner by his subjects punished.” Hobbes offered what might be called suicide pact sovereignty: to recognize a government’s existence is to automatically concede the government’s right to destroy everything in its domain. Hobbes sought to terrify readers with a portrayal of life in the “state of nature” as the “war of all against all” that made even perpetual political slavery look preferable. John Locke, in his Second Treatise of Government published a few decades later, scoffed at Hobbes’ “solution”: “This is to think that men are so foolish that they take care to avoid what mischiefs may be done them by polecats and foxes, but are content, nay think it safety, to be devoured by lions.” As Charles Tarlton, a professor at the State University of New York in Albany, noted in a superb 2001 article in The History of Political Thought, Hobbes “despotical doctrine” rests upon “an absolute and arbitrary political power joined with a moral demand for complete, simple and unquestioning political obedience and, second, the concept that no action of the sovereign can ever be unjust or even criticized.”

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Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, and Caligula, Were More Honest . . . by Butler Shaffer

Posted on October 30, 2017 | Leave a comment

Never fool yourself that government is anything more than organized violence. From Butler Shaffer at lewrockwell.com:

What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It’s not good at much else.

– Tom Clancy

…than modern politicians in at least one respect: these ancient tyrants made no pretense of being the agents of those over whom they ruled. They established their vicious authority in the same way all political systems of power are created: by violent conquest. Men and women obeyed these thugs for one reason: the fear that their defiance would result in instant death. Despots gradually realized that their power over others could be made more secure by convincing the ruled that their authority was sanctioned by God, with whom they shared a pipeline. By the time of the Enlightenment, the “divine right” rationale was replaced by the principle of an imaginary “social contract” between rulers and the ruled.

In my reading of history, I have yet to find any political system that arose by voluntary agreement amongst members of a given population. Even the history of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution demonstrates the fallacy of such a “contract.” After New Hampshire’s approval satisfied the minimal number of states that would have to have ratified the document, the state of Rhode Island refused to do so. Some 92% of Rhode Islanders voted to reject the document. Rhode Island was home to many independent-minded persons, including Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, and Quakers. Such people distrusted power – particularly as many of them had been driven out of Massachusetts by those in power. As such, Rhode Island refused to send delegates to the Constitutional Convention. With the U.S. government now in business, one of its first acts was to threaten Rhode Island with military invasion, the cutting off of trade, and the blockading of its ports. Rhode Island was forced to concede obedience to a system that 92% of its residents didn’t want, leading to the conclusion that it was the first victim of American imperialism!

To continue reading: Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, and Caligula, Were More Honest . . . 

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