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Obama's theory of government versus that of Hobbes and Locke

Obama & Authority – Or, How to Analyze Barack’s Theory of Power



In the midst of our nonstop Obamacare passage marathon, whose cyclical return resembles the plot of the film Groundhog Day more than anything else, it's time to ask: Upon what does Barack Obama's theory of government rest? The answer here will, more than that to any other question, help predict what the next three-years of his term will resemble. So far, Obama's administration and public policy doesn't seem like any other President's in US history. But why is this? Does he seek to repudiate our supposed recent failures? Or is his aim much broader, to obliterate our entire way of life, replacing it with something more exotic or sinister?

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More to the point, does Barack believe simply being elected to the US Presidency means he has the authority and power, or the right, to do whatever he likes to America? The answer is -- it increasingly looks that way from outside DC. To analyze Obama's theories in action, we must review some basic models of government, aided by a few important thinkers, being Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. But our central question to ask and answer is whether Barack Obama, or any other US president, has the right to repeatedly make decisions that defy the clear will of the American people? The answer is a simple, “No” -- as our Declaration of Independence itself states... “governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Two main theories of authority

What exactly is the model that Obama is employing, if any, to justify his decision making and policies? In order to discuss this, we will examine two key writers of massive historical influence who sum up the great disagreement over what is an acceptable use of power in a political setting. We can break down the central issue of Obama's approach to power by comparing the ideas of Thomas Hobbes versus John Locke to understand what the essential differences are. The theories of Hobbes versus Locke can be generally described as thus: Hobbes believed that society was a place of great danger and constant war, so the state had to become a secular god to protect all the people in it, and therefore all authority rested in the state. Conversely, Locke believed each person had legal standing beyond the state, given by God, with all authority ultimately vested in God, but loaned to human government by Him. In other words, one theory of political leadership rests on a claim that God allows some men to rule others, as long as they abide by His precepts. Whereas, the other theory asserts authority is ultimately based on the barrel of a gun, all niceties being set aside. Thomas Hobbes Thomas Hobbes was born in Wiltshire, England in 1588, died in 1679, and was educated at Oxford. He wrote arguably the first modern political tract, Leviathan, in 1651. The imagery comes from the Book of Job. He composed this at a time when every member of polite society, if not apparently Christian, was branded an infidel. Hobbes was often accused of the latter. He was forced to couch his generally secular ideas in biblical garb, according to Christopher Hill, in “The English Bible and the Seventeenth Century Revolution.” Hobbes' ideas were shockingly un-religious, in fact. He seemingly accepted the Calvinist tenet that people are naturally wicked, perhaps influenced by his Puritan schooling. But instead of proposing to answer this problem with a sophisticated type of government – such as America's tripartite political system ingeniously dividing power – his solution was the sheer might and terror of state power. Hobbes was convinced that without a strong government to regulate men's actions, strife and warfare would be the constant result. He said, “I put for a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.” His “state of nature”, being man outside society, was one of war. He wrote that life was a contest where we... “must suppose to have no other good, nor other garland, but being foremost.” According to Hobbes, people only care about themselves and winning, regardless of the cost to anyone else. So it made sense to him that individuals would be willing to trade supposed “natural law” rights (which were illusory anyway), for the kind of protection that only a strong government could offer. Hobbes was an early proponent of the “social contract theory” but insisted the people should submit all their will to the authority of the absolute, undivided and unlimited sovereign power of the state. Hobbes explained his cynical world view in Leviathan:
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.
Hobbes was influenced by such writers as the ruthless Machiavelli, and he sought to make his ideas compatible with the great scientific, mechanical and mathematical breakthroughs of his day. He wrote in Leviathan, "The universe is corporeal; all that is real is material, and what is not material is not real." He influenced, or was comrades-in-arm with many later writers, like George Hegel, whose Philosophy of Right also grants the government unlimited powers without recourse against it. Also, the godless Germans Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl Marx, the latter following closely in Hegel's philosophical footsteps. Robert Filmer also agreed with Hobbes in his idea of a Divine Right of Kings, which Locke then answered in his essays on government. John Locke John Locke was born at Somerset, England in 1632, and died in 1704, and was also educated at Oxford. His training was in medicine, yet he had an insatiable curiosity to continually learn. He wrote on government, economics, politics, religion, and many other topics. His life changed forever when he was discovered by Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, becoming his personal assistant when Cooper served in the government. Locke's overall vision was based upon the belief that God created man and we are therefore His property. He stated, “The Bible is one of the greatest blessings bestowed by God on the children of men. It has God for its author; salvation for its end, and truth without any mixture for its matter. It is all pure.” Locke's Two Treatises on Government had a massive impact on the English speaking world, as well as Continental writers. Locke's work certainly formed an indelible impression upon the American revolutionary thinkers. The Declaration of Independence was largely formed based on his theories of government as interpreted by Thomas Jefferson. The Constitution was also widely influenced by his ideas. Locke was deeply impressed by his Puritan upbringing, and he borrowed from biblical covenant theology and transferred these into his Social Contract theory. Locke believed in limited government, writing “Government has no other end, but the preservation of property.” He is considered a mainstream of inspiration for both classical liberalism and the Enlightenment. Locke also stated, “The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of law, where there is no law, there is no freedom.” Locke opposed Hobbes' belief that a social contract makes men slaves of the government, arguing it instead binds them together until such time as the state goes too far in oppressing its citizens. Then people can revolt and put a new government in power that serves the people instead of itself. Locke's theory that political authority lies in the people, instead of the government leaders, was an extraordinarily powerful act of political judo. He inverted the paradigm, making the people sovereign, and the leadership mere servants of the masses. This is until the leaders stop serving the people who appointed or elected them. In Locke's political universe, revolution is a right always reserved for use against unjust leaders. Locke wrote in his Second Treatise:
221. There is therefore, secondly, another way whereby Governments are dissolved, and that is; when the Legislative, or the Prince, either of them act contrary to their Trust. First, The Legislative acts against the Trust reposed in them, when they endeavour to invade the Property of the Subject, and to make themselves, or any part of the Community, Masters, or Arbitrary Disposers of the Lives, Liberties, or Fortunes of the People.
Locke wrote his First Treatise of Government to refute the Divine Right of Kings doctrine espoused by Sir Robert Filmer in such works as his “Patriarcha, or the Natural Power of Kings.” This piece argued anyone whom God placed on a throne as king would also have his words and deeds likewise purified by heaven. In the the Second Treatise of Government, Locke again attacks Hobbes when he writes we need enlightened leaders, “lest men fall into the dangerous belief that all government in the world is merely the product of force and violence.“ Locke here asserts natural rights theory, claiming these are God-given rights human beings claim even before a government is formed, and therefore cannot be given away or taken by a rapacious government. Locke posits a natural right of survival that all persons own, where people agree to transfer some rights to a central government, while keeping the rest, resulting in the “social contract.” He claims we need life, liberty, health and property to achieve the safety the state of nature cannot confer. Locke writes: “The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges everyone: and reason which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions…” Locke also wrote that there were times when a revolution can naturally occur:
225. Secondly, I Answer, such Revolutions happen not upon every little mismanagement in publick affairs. Great mistakes in the ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient Laws, and all the slips of humane frailty will be born by the People, without mutiny or murmur. But if a long train of Abuses, Prevarications, and Artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the People, and they cannot but feel, what they lie under, and see, whither they are going; 'tis not to be wonder'd, that they should then rouze themselves, and endeavour to put the rule into such hands, which may secure to them the ends for which Government was at first erected...

Obama's theory of government versus that of Hobbes and Locke

Obama Versus Locke Barack tacitly admits his ideals are completely at odds with Locke's thought. First, he made reference to the fact he wants to give the poor money and property from the wealthy. Second, he insists only his own opinion counts for decisions of state, even if no one else agrees with him, on his public policy choice. This creates a default tyranny. He said to Joe “The Plumber” Wurzelbacher, “...I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody." So Obama sees property as something the government morally controls, and so can arbitrarily take from one group (the rich) and give to another (the poor). Locke would be totally opposed to this notion since a person's labor creates privately owned property, produced by their body, translated in the form of goods or wages. Obama is no respecter of property rights when his massive deficit spending is displayed on various bills like the Stimulus, Bank Bailout, Detroit car maker, Jobs, etc. These prove he does not mind picking the pocket of future Americans to cover his spending today. Further, he is also causing more future loss by making decisions that raise the specter of inflation and loss of worth of our currency. Locke would point out to Obama that the wealth that people create is theirs, given to them by God, and made available to them for their survival. He would also note that if Obama refuses to accept this basic right of all people, he ought not be in power. Further, Locke would say that a leader who relentlessly opposed the will of the people, and who forced opinions and decisions upon them they did not want, was not a leader at all, but a tyrant acting as an enslaver. And tyrants ought not be in power, as they take God's position over men on earth, and reduce them to slavery in the name of trite and ephemeral political passions. Hobbes and Obama Obama would feel right at home under the expansive theories of Hobbes, especially as there is no act that Barack could commit that would be categorized as illegitimate. Hobbes wrote...“there can happen no breach of covenant on the part of the sovereign; and consequently none of his subjects, by any pretence of forfeiture, can be freed from his subjection.” Or, in other words, the government, or king or tyrant can do no evil act that ever frees residents of the state from their obligation to obey the sovereign. But imagine applying this political theory to those sent to Dachau or Auschwitz! Legitimacy, for Hobbes, is wholly summed up in the office and power of the government. There is no difference between these two things; they are one and the same. So if Obama wanted to pass health care “reform” with 60 votes, 51 votes, or his own 1 vote, it would be just as legitimate. Further, a person who protested this should be removed or struck down for his or her presumption to criticize what Hobbes called, “That great LEVIATHAN, or rather (to speak more reverently) of that Mortal God, to which we owe under the Immortal God, our peace and defence.” The writers and leadership who would agree with this brand of political ethics include Machiavelli, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Spinoza, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Lenin, etc. This is because the definition of a “just government” is “just a government” to Hobbesians. The details do not matter, only that the sovereign has unlimited and unmitigated authority. It could even be a government or state achieved by trickery, murder, or sabotage, it matters not. This is not to suggest that Hobbes would have liked to see bloodshed, or wicked tyranny. He merely allowed the theoretical possibility of such happening in order to guard against his fears that chaos would materialize without strong and constant government power. But unfortunately, this wipes out the possibility of a natural or biblical law that supersedes the corrupt laws of man. And it is ironic that the very worst governments in history have occurred under a Hobbesian style of authority, and no other, despite his desire to avoid the worst types of political outcomes. Having claimed the state has an unlimited right to power and decision-making, Hobbes then does a curious maneuver. He nonsensically suggests, against his own previous statements, that people do have some inalienable rights, or what he calls “true liberties of subjects.” This allows some response to the fickle decisions of the government, including a right to disobey or resist when their lives are in danger, or in regards to their families or honor. This inclusion against Hobbes strenuous defense of sovereignty has puzzled researchers for centuries, who have not been able to reconcile it to his other words. Perhaps Hobbes was troubled by the savage implications of his ideas when he applied them to real life situations, where the government was either mistaken in how it was treating its citizens, or completely running amok. This happened later under the same theory in communist China led by Mao, when tens of millions were slaughtered in the name of the sovereign, but without any other excuse.

Conclusion & Declaration of Independence

In closing, we ought to remember how Locke's ideas have increased freedom and reduced suffering for millions or billions, all over the world, for hundreds of years. Locke stood for the proposition that might does not make right, and neither does a just government result merely from the barrel of a gun, as Chairman Mao stated. Instead, all Americans have political and civil rights vested in them from birth which cannot be taken away by some rogue government, no matter what its rhetoric or its supposed goodly intent. Let's now recall the stirring words of the Declaration of Independence:

Declaration of Independence

Here is the complete text of the Declaration of Independence. The original spelling and capitalization have been retained.
(Adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776) The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands. He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature. He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation: For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states: For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world: For imposing taxes on us without our consent: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury: For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses: For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies: For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments: For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends. We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
Source: The Pennsylvania Packet, July 8, 1776


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Kelly O'Connell -- Bio and Archives

Kelly O’Connell is an author and attorney. He was born on the West Coast, raised in Las Vegas, and matriculated from the University of Oregon. After laboring for the Reformed Church in Galway, Ireland, he returned to America and attended law school in Virginia, where he earned a JD and a Master’s degree in Government. He spent a stint working as a researcher and writer of academic articles at a Miami law school, focusing on ancient law and society. He has also been employed as a university Speech & Debate professor. He then returned West and worked as an assistant district attorney. Kelly is now is a private practitioner with a small law practice in New Mexico.


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