Contra Hobbes

from The Machinery of Freedom

In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short. (Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan)

Hobbes had a vision, certain, crystal clear,
Through logic’s lens alone he clearly saw
The state of nature, red in tooth and claw
And sword and axe, where each man lives in fear,
A nightmare world unless a king appear
Equipped with force enough to overawe
All powers else and bend them to his law,
A monarch absolute, without a peer.

One question yet remains: In many lands
Men lived and fathered children, planted grain,
Slept soundly through the night, worked with their hands,
Together or apart, for love or gain.
How is it that the human race survived
Through the long years before the king arrived?

The Cure

A doctor synthesized the perfect cure
For a disease that he was certain sure
Mankind without his aid could not endure.
His flawless logic with no doubt implied
That the disease existed, so he tried,
To offer up the cure on every side.
And many patients took the cure
                                                   And died.

In total, during the first eighty-eight years of this century, almost 170,000,000 men, women, and children have been shot, beaten, tortured, knifed, burned, starved, frozen, crushed, or worked to death; or buried alive, drowned, hung, bombed, or killed in any other of the myriad ways governments have inflicted death on unarmed, helpless citizens or foreigners. (R.J. Rummel, Death by Government)