Hell no - The Writer's Almanac
From Garrison Keillor -
April 5th:
Today is the birthday of Thomas Hobbes, born in Westport, Wiltshire, England (1588) who witnessed a chaotic time in English politics, with two civil wars and the execution of the king. He wrote his most famous book, Leviathan, in the midst of it, in which he argues that people need a strong central authority to keep them from collapsing into war and chaos, a world with "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." He believed that because we don't share the same ideas about what's right and wrong, we need a sovereign to enforce a set of laws.
Hobbes was a Utopian -- history has a long record of these ideas failing miserably.
Hobbes needs to be returned to the dustbin of history...
Posted by DaveH at April 5, 2013 1:10 PM