I was having a discussion with a friend who began defending Obama’s expansive social welfare programs with arguments about the social contract and our collective responsibility to each other.  It got me thinking about just what that means because the left has a very different understanding of the social contract than our Founding Fathers did.  The social contract Obama envisions is the same one to which the left has adhered for a century.  This is why Obama used to talk about “fundamentally transforming America”.  Their social contract is based on a collective sovereignty while our Founding Fathers rightly understood only individual sovereignty.

First we should start with what the term ‘social contract’ means.  The Social Contract was a book by French philosopher Jean Jacque Rousseau about the best way to establish a political community in a society full of inequality.  Prior to Rousseau however, the term was already well understood to be an intellectual and rhetorical abstract to describe the proper roles and responsibilities between citizens, society and the government.  Though philosophers have been discussing the concept since Plato, and continue to do so today, the big three when discussing the social contract are Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau.

This is important because the social contract our Founding Fathers understood was one based on the works of John Locke.  Both Hobbes and Locke believed that in the state of nature, man before society, life was nasty and short.  Hobbes referred to it as a war of “all against all”.  While Locke was not as pessimistic as Hobbes he also believed that the anarchy which exists in nature prevents men from achieving prosperity.  This is because there is no security in one’s natural rights to life and property if one must be constantly defending them from potential aggressors.  Hobbes advocated an absolute dictator charged with enforcing laws against theft and murder as the best way to accomplish this security.  Locke alternatively developed a theory that humans form societies so that a government can be invested with the role of ‘neutral judge’ drawing it power only from the consent of the governed, a consent which can be removed if the government begins to infringe on the rights it was created to protect.   This is the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and the thinking which motivates groups like the Tea Party

Rousseau’s vision of the social contract starts from a different place than Hobbes or Locke.  Rousseau believed everything was communal among men in the state of nature.  It was the development of society that brought forth greed and jealousy and the potential for violence against each other.  Therefore, according to Rousseau and eventually Marx and the modern left, greater reliance on collective sovereignty to equalize outcomes is needed to build a better society.  Individual sovereignty then is a false construct built on ego, selfishness and greed.  This is the spirit behind “spreading the wealth.

This is where we get to Obama’s vision of the social contract and why he wants to “fundamentally transform America”.  The principles enshrined in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution are those of sovereign individuals.  Each citizen a singular being equally endowed with natural rights but agreeing to give up only as much sovereignty, and property, as is necessary to enforce collective security.  Security and the expectation of freedom from molestation is what allows individuals to start businesses, own property, invest and prosper.  When Obama lamented our Constitution as a charter of “negative liberties” listing what government “can’t do to you” instead of what it “must do for you” he was expressly rejecting the concepts upon which our country was founded.

Ironically our Founding Fathers did believe we had certain responsibilities to each other, they did believe in a safety net.   To them the safety net was voluntary and should be accomplished through community organizations, religious institutions and charities. The government cannot enforce charity and equality because it has no right to do so.  In order to equalize outcomes the government would be forced to violate the rights it was created to protect and take property and wealth away from citizens at the figurative, and sometimes literal, point of a gun.  Not only is this a violation of natural rights, but it will inevitably cause government to become a tyrannical and capricious master, dispensing benefits as favors to special classes, trading dependency and alms for votes and greater influence in our lives.  Does anyone doubt this is where we are today?