Memorial Day

In honor of those who died for our cause.
Just what is our cause? Is it the body of political thought arising from John Locke or Thomas Hobbes? As Thom Hartmann summarizes the alternative, that man is either basically good and merits his freedoms or that man is basically evil and needs restraint. The latter (Hobbes) wrote of this in The Leviathan about the need for a powerful state to restrain what even religion failed to check. Thom's guest, Michael D. Tanner, author of Leviathan on the Right

It is my view that The New Leviathan is actually The Corporation ** (circa Globalization * ). But the bottom line is that the nature of man (and I leave the nature of women aside)is a duality. Now the nature of woman may be the countebalance or lacking component, for are we not talking the balance of good and evil and the scale of justice depending on the notion of competition and cooperation.

Now the above may be too metaphorical. But for more to sort:

The Logic of "Leviathan": Moral and Political Theory of Thomas Hobbes.

Natural Right and History

Note: Being Memorial Day, The Thom Hartmann Show was a "best of". But this post is realtime, yet closes an interesting loop. The Leviathan in my mind was not a monster, but just a creation of man called government, while the corporation is also a creation of man and not supernatural, nor/let alone an individual. What would more honor the dead, than to know what we are fighting for?

* [the corporation / globalization loop and the part we play or don't]

[** May 25th, 2009: Corporations are only the Leviathan in terms of the fear that is implied from something big as the state is to be feared when unchecked. But they are both necessary within limits.]
[10:39 AM The Rhetoric of Leviathan led me to further summarize (rhetorically), what is the connection? "Hard work" as in "War is"... and who does it and what is the nature of the state of economics?]