The ‘Hobbes Index’ Is Making A Comeback
Under Biden
Issues & Insights, by Paul Petrick
The best thing about Joe Biden’s presidency is his penchant for short speeches. It is unclear if he has the stamina for the marathon orations of his predecessor, but certainly the American people do not. The dismal ratings for this year’s State of the Union Address bear that out as they did for Biden’s first address to a joint session of Congress last year.
Who can blame them? The American people have endured much lately. One might not know that from listening to Biden’s remarks on March 1st where he evaluated the state of the union as “strong.” But leading societal indicators suggest a different adjective – “Hobbesian.”
Seventeenth-century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes is among the theorists most associated with the concept of the “social contract,” the process by which members of a society surrender some of their liberty to a higher authority in exchange for that authority’s protection of their rights.
Hobbes’ magnum opus is the treatise “Leviathan” (1651), in which he described the “state of nature” that existed before order was established via the social contract. Hobbes described the state of nature as a “war of all against all” with nothing preventing one neighbor from killing another and taking his property. In Leviathan’s most famous passage, Hobbes characterized life in the state of nature as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
Life in America has recently taken a Hobbesian turn.
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https://issuesinsights.com/2022/03/09/measuring-bidens-performance-on-the-hobbes-index/
