Insidb said:
1. I wholeheatedly agree. 2. I have to disagree; many of the things I mentioned fundamentally changed our human awareness and, by extension, our nature. Most of the universe (macro and micro) was presumed to be known and still remains largely undiscovered and, consequently, unexplored. That fundamentally impacts the context of our human awareness and ability to reasonably fashion any social contract, at any time. Adding to the context are the things mentioned that denote a contract fashioned by a largely homogeneous group that excluded a vast majority of people (women and minorities were disallowed from contribution). The ideas of wealthy, white, albeit educated, men is insufficient to comprise the full spectrum of human nature. 3. The government derives its powers from the power it can leverage, typically consolidated through a system of currency with an appropriated, sometime agreed-upon value. Through history, it has taken the form of salt, land, real estate, gold, money, et. al. Most stable governments tend to rely very little on force to control their populace and use the market and associated social structures to foster compliance. The law is the law, and right is right, but coincision is never guaranteed. When the law is purported to be wrong, the right course of action is to question the law and not its questioner. The Founding Fathers knew this and wisely provided the provision for amendment. Problems tend to arise when "conservative" parties are unwilling to open themselves to question, because antiquated and/or anachronistic laws are a source of their power. |
2. I disagree first with your suggestion that persons in the enlightment era believed they knew most of the world. This wasn't called the age of reason and empiricism without proper substance. I secondly disagree with your use of the phrase "human nature." When one speaks of human nature one is only speaking of the qualities that are common to all or almost all human beings. The rights to life, liberty, and the estate summarized this human nature well in 1791 and today in 2015 just the same. So when a document is constructed to protect the corollaries of said rights, it does not hold any less valid in 2015 than it did in 1791. The various inventions have not affected the intent and logic behind the codification of rights.
3. I was speaking of the origins and ends of governments. The monopolies you alluded to would not exist without the backing of force. Whether it is the framers presupposing how the other ten million Americans and future Americans want to be governed, a mobocracy in which the individual is at the whims of a majority absolutely, a king who thinks of persons as his property, etc etc it is all substantiated by the use of force to secure monopolies in law, power, money, defense, and a plethora of other goods and services. That is the nature of government the use or threat of monopolic force.
