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Notes -
Natural law only applies to men of honour who will kill for that honour and glory.
Hobbes, locke, and the founding fathers assumed they lived in a world where men would look a man in the eye and murder him rituallistically as his friends watched, because the man had insulted him, and that that man would sooner stare down a pistol and "Recieve fire" than reveal himself a coward.
Unless you're willing to die and kill for your personal pride and pride alone you are not a free man with natural rights but a slave.
We are doomed to be slowly conquered by the cartels, they will slowly take over and slaughter all who oppose them and we'll deserve it and the gods will howl in rage that they show us any mercy.
Much as this could be brought up and debated in other contexts, is there any other American foe that is more worthy of being called men of honor in this sense than the Confederacy? But let's not take easy asides, your real objection to what I'm saying is that you think power is the thing-in-itself and the fictions I'm talking about have no reality except as to describe the relationships between the weak and the strong.
I disagree because I think there is such a thing as magic. The sentimentality that binds people into being a nation and not just a warband is a spell that has to be taken into account. Mere brutes are not lasting rulers. Women lord it over men that could easily overpower them. The story people tell about what they're doing, though it cannot replace the reality of the deed, is still very important.
And though as you justly point out, the higher levels of civilization Hobbes calls out for are only possible if we retain the ability to do violence. These higher levels are still real, desirable, meaningful and -- insofar as the Enlightenment is wrong about there ever being a state of nature -- natural.
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