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(That’s not a reference to London mayor Sadiq Khan, by the way.)
According to the theory of the social contract, ruler and ruled enter into a binding agreement, surrendering certain of their natural rights in the interests of peace, prosperity and good government.
In the Anglo-American tradition, the great exponent of social-contract theory is Thomas Hobbes, who wrote Leviathan: Or the Matter, Form and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil (1651).
Hobbes was writing at a time—the end of the English Civil War, which had seen King Charles I beheaded and England declared a republic—when the legitimacy of government, especially monarchy, was no longer taken for granted.
Hobbes, a monarchist, wanted to set his preferred form of government back on a stable footing.
Hobbes asks: What is the ultimate basis of authority? What rights do subjects have in relation to a sovereign? Who or what is a sovereign? And many other questions.
The backbone of Hobbes’ argument about the social contract is a fictional account of the creation of society, under the leadership of a sovereign, out of primeval chaos.
Before the existence of a sovereign, man is in a “state of nature.” His life in this condition, Hobbes famously wrote, is “nasty, brutish and short.” Man is engaged in a “war of all against all,” where any man, given the chance, can kill any other, and the sole concern is survival at any cost.
Kill or be killed.
Into this madness steps forth the sovereign, who offers our pitiful men a rational choice: I will protect you and bring to an end the war of all against all, I will enforce peace; but you must give me your obedience. You will not enjoy the same rights as you once did, but the sacrifice you make will, ultimately, leave you freer, because you will no longer fear death at every turn.
Simple-minded critics of Hobbes and other writers in the tradition often criticize him as if he were describing a real event that actually took place once upon a time. As if the first king sat down with the first subjects and hammered out a contract under an oak tree somewhere—and that was that. No, Hobbes didn’t mean it literally. It was a metaphor.
But that didn’t make it any less real. The exercise is meant to highlight an essential truth about government, or good government, at least: that it exists on the basis of goodwill from both parties, and both must benefit. That is just rule: rule with consent.
Of course, as a representative of the most contractually minded people on earth, the English, Hobbes reached for the law to explain this agreement and how it had binding force. But virtually all people, even illiterate cowherds on the banks of the Nile, can understand what it means to give your word—and to break it.
This influential theory, that government exists and derives its legitimacy from protecting its own people, is being sorely tested across the Western world today, and nowhere more than Hobbes’ native England.
On Saturday night, two men on a train from Doncaster bound for London unleashed a savage knife attack, seriously injuring at least nine people. The attackers were both subdued and arrested on charges of attempted murder.
The police are saying it’s “too early” to speculate about the motivations of the attackers, but they’ve already ruled out “terrorism”—as if rampaging through a train stabbing people at will with a large knife isn’t an act intended to spread fear and terror.
Semantics are important. The government’s unwillingness to label such an act “terrorism” by default is a sign of its prior commitments. If two white men had committed a similar atrocity, the media and government would have been screaming “far-right terrorists” from the top of Big Ben.
The police were unusually quick to release information about the perpetrators. Both are “British citizens”: two black men in their 30s, one of whom is of “Caribbean ancestry.” This is being hailed as some kind of victory, as if it disproves that atrocities like this are only carried out by recent arrivals in the country and especially Muslims. Of course, it’s anything but disproof. It’s just further evidence that Britain’s immigration policies since the Second World War have been a disaster. That the cherished ideal of “integration” is a myth. There’s plenty of evidence, including detailed scientific studies, that second-, third- and even fourth-generation immigrants feel little to no attachment to their new nations. Among other things, this makes them more likely, not less, to be radicalized and to join terror groups like ISIS. Black British men are now converting to Islam in large numbers, so the possibility of a religious motive can’t be discarded just yet.
The fact the two men are British citizens does nothing to change the fact that it’s recent arrivals who are responsible for the current wave of shocking violence that’s led to protests across the nation. On Monday, in Uxbridge, north-west London, an Afghan refugee stabbed three people, including a teenager, in a random attack on a quiet residential street. A man died and the other two victims were badly injured.
Home Secretary Shabhana Mahmood cautioned Britons last night to keep their “comments” and “speculation” in hand. Implicit in that caution was, of course, a threat: Say the wrong thing and you’ll end up in prison, like Lucy Connelly. Mrs Connelly was jailed last year for posting and swiftly deleting an angry Tweet after the Southport stabbings, when the son of a Rwandan migrant walked into a dance class and started murdering little girls.
It’s already been suggested the solution to train stabbings is to bring airport-style security to train stations. This is as clear a sign as any that the British government has no plans to address the real causes of these horrifying attacks. But we knew that already.
Nine out of ten councils in Britain are now housing migrants. Nowhere is safe. There’s nowhere to run to escape the benefits of diversity. Any train journey, from Penzance to Plymouth, from Manchester to Leeds, even the Flying Scotsman, could end in a bloodbath.
In the long run, this is probably beneficial. Nobody will be able to retreat a safe distance and bury their head in the sand. The reality of what the British government is doing will be undeniable. But that means more people will be hurt, and some will die.
In Britain, the sovereign is no longer the guarantor of peace. Instead, he now guarantees rape, violence and murder—an unending stream of atrocities, brought to Britain’s shores by an unending stream of foreign men who have no right to be there.
What happens when the sovereign fails to honor his side of the contract? Does Hobbes have an answer to that? Maybe go and look it up.
