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The
Below Comments Relate to this Newslink:
The NRA sees a bleak Hobbesian world. So why does it want to arm individuals with guns?
Submitted by:
Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com
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Doing so is difficult, however, because Hobbes argues that in the absence of government, individuals will frequently attack and kill one another in what he terms “the war of all against all.” It is not that he thinks humans are evil; far from it. But he argues that our natural tendencies — vanity, competitiveness, fearfulness and glory-seeking — will inevitably lead us to fight, and frequently kill, each other. As a result, without government, human life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
Faced with such a bleak existence, Hobbes argues that there is only one solution to the problem of a violent and chaotic world: a government with absolute power. |
| Comment by:
MarkHamTownsend
(4/20/2018)
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| I wonder if the author considered the possibility that the NRA took its position not by a silly conflating of John Locke and Thomas Hobbs but by a serious consideration of our modern condition, informed by the philosophies of those who support and donate to the NRA? |
| Comment by:
PHORTO
(4/20/2018)
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| False dichotomy. But then, what else would you expect from WaPo? |
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| To have no proud monarch driving over me with his gilt coaches; nor his host of excise-men and tax-gatherers insulting and robbing me; but to be my own master, my own prince and sovereign, gloriously preserving my national dignity, and pursuing my true happiness; planting my vineyards, and eating their luscious fruits; and sowing my fields, and reaping the golden grain: and seeing millions of brothers all around me, equally free and happy as myself. This, sir, is what I long for. -- General Francis Marion, American War of Independence, Georgetown, SC [Source: 'Marion, The Life of Gen. Francis Marion' by M. L. Weems, Ch.18] |
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