Week 1, Lecture B: "Do We Need A Government?" Often we use words like freedom and liberty without ever thinking about what these words mean. We assume that we all mean the same thing by these words; however, in reality, we all live by different personal definitions of freedom and liberty. Our definitions are not based on a dictionary but are informed by our unique personal life experiences. Consider the diversity even in this course. How might someone understand words like liberty and freedom from a background, culture, age, gender, or even race that is different from yours? Each of us has a unique story that has brought us to this point – and each of our stories is intrinsically valuable and important. If we think about this level of diversity – how and why do such different individuals come together to exist together in a society? The State of Nature, or Life Without Government Simply, freedom and liberty are not the same thing. Let’s consider what we mean by freedom. For our purposes, freedom is doing whatever you want to do, whenever you want to do it. If everyone had absolute freedom and could do whatever they wanted whenever they wanted what would our world look like? What would our relationships with each other look like? These are the questions that political philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke asked. These are also question that our founders asked as they pondered the creation of a new nation. They called this condition of absolute freedom the State of Nature – a state in which people lived in absolute freedom with no social structures or government. For Hobbes, life in this state of nature looked very terrible. Hobbes described the state of nature as: “In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short…” Additionally, Hobbes suggested: “For before constitution of sovereign power, as hath already been shown, all men had right to all things, which necessarily causeth war.” For Hobbes, freedom was each individual having the right to all things. If you have new car, in the state of nature, I have right to take your new car – even by force and violence. Hobbes is saying that in the state of nature, or trying to live life without government, no form of cooperation between individuals is possible and thus there will be no grocery stores, no computers, no smartphones, no art, and each individual will suffer a very quick and violent death. The founders of our nation shared Hobbes’ fairly pessimistic outlook regarding human nature. James Madison famously wrote i.

1. Week 1, Lecture B: "Do We Need A Government?"
Often we use words like freedom and liberty without ever
thinking about what these words mean. We assume that we all
mean the same thing by these words; however, in reality, we all
live by different personal definitions of freedom and liberty.
Our definitions are not based on a dictionary but are informed
by our unique personal life experiences. Consider the diversity
even in this course. How might someone understand words like
liberty and freedom from a background, culture, age, gender, or
even race that is different from yours? Each of us has a unique
story that has brought us to this point – and each of our stories
is intrinsically valuable and important.
If we think about this level of diversity – how and why do such
different individuals come together to exist together in a
society?
The State of Nature, or Life Without Government
Simply, freedom and liberty are not the same thing. Let’s
consider what we mean by freedom. For our purposes, freedom
is doing whatever you want to do, whenever you want to do it.
If everyone had absolute freedom and could do whatever they
wanted whenever they wanted what would our world look like?
What would our relationships with each other look like?
These are the questions that political philosophers such as
Thomas Hobbes and John Locke asked. These are also question
that our founders asked as they pondered the creation of a new
nation. They called this condition of absolute freedom the State
of Nature – a state in which people lived in absolute freedom
with no social structures or government.
For Hobbes, life in this state of nature looked very terrible.
Hobbes described the state of nature as:
“In such condition there is no place for industry, because the
fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the
earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be
imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of

2. moving and removing such things as require much force; no
knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts;
no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear,
and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor,
nasty, brutish, and short…”
Additionally, Hobbes suggested:
“For before constitution of sovereign power, as hath already
been shown, all men had right to all things, which necessarily
causeth war.”
For Hobbes, freedom was each individual having the right to all
things. If you have new car, in the state of nature, I have right
to take your new car – even by force and violence.
Hobbes is saying that in the state of nature, or trying to live life
without government, no form of cooperation between
individuals is possible and thus there will be no grocery stores,
no computers, no smartphones, no art, and each individual will
suffer a very quick and violent death.
The founders of our nation shared Hobbes’ fairly pessimistic
outlook regarding human nature. James Madison famously wrote
in Federalist #51:
“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all
reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no
government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men,
neither external nor internal controls on government would be
necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered
by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first
enable the government to control the governed; and in the next
place oblige it to control itself.”
John Locke (a political philosopher that the founders of our
nation held in very high regard) similarly argued:
“To understand political power, we must consider the condition
in which nature puts all men. It is a state of perfect freedom to
do as they wish and dispose of themselves and their possessions
as they think fit, within the bounds of the laws of nature. They
need not ask permission or the consent of any other man.”
John Locke also assessed “equality and justice” as being

3. impossible to achieve in this state of nature:
“If a man in the state of nature is free, if he is absolute lord of
his own person and possessions, why will he give up his
freedom? Why will he put himself under the control of any
person or institution? The obvious answer is that the rights in
the state of nature are constantly exposed to the attacks of
others. Since every man is equal and since most men do not
concern themselves with equity and justice, the enjoyment of
rights in the state of nature is unsafe and insecure. Hence each
man joins in society with others to preserve life, liberty, and
property.”
Simply put, life without government is very bad.
Social Contract
The social contract is the idea that individuals would
voluntarily give up some of their rights - specifically the right
to absolute freedom (freedom to whatever, whenever) - to a
governing authority that would provide at least a partial escape
from the horrors of the state of nature. The idea of the social
contract developed from the ideas of several political
philosophers. Thomas Hobbes famously called this governing
authority created by the people to escape the horrors of the state
of nature, the Leviathan.
For Hobbes, this escape from the state of nature was liberty. For
our founders this was just the beginning of liberty. For both,
liberty could only occur when the people of a society gave up
their right to absolute and unchecked freedom. Liberty and
freedom were not the same thing.
“THE final cause, end, or design of men (who naturally love
liberty, and dominion over others) in the introduction of that
restraint upon themselves, in which we see them live in
Commonwealths, is the foresight of their own preservation, and
of a more contented life thereby; that is to say, of getting
themselves out from that miserable condition of war which is
necessarily consequent, as hath been shown, to the natural
passions of men when there is no visible power to keep them in
awe, and tie them by fear of punishment to the performance of

4. their covenants, and observation of those laws of nature set
down [above]….”
Despite his more optimistic view on human nature, philosopher
Jean-Jacques Rousseau also captures this difference between
freedom (which Rousseau calls “natural liberty” or the
“unlimited right to everything”) and liberty (which Rousseau
calls “civil liberty”):
“What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty and
an unlimited right to everything that tempts him and to
everything he can take; what he gains is civil liberty and
ownership of everything he possesses”
Much of the genius of our founders was that they understood the
terrible things that humans do to each other (as evidenced by
human history) and created as system of government that did
not overlook our inclination toward evil.
This idea of the social contract, or that we would voluntarily
give up our freedom to gain the liberty of living in society is
how our founders arrived at the idea of a government that
governs by the “Consent of the Governed.”
As Alexander Hamilton resolutely concludes Federalist #22:
“The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis
of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national
power ought to flow immediately from that pure, original
fountain of all legitimate authority.”
Terms of the Contract: Equality
According to philosophers Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau the
state of nature and social contract also produced a certain level
of equality between individuals in a society.
According to John Locke:
“The state of nature is also a state of equality. No one has more
power or authority than another. Since all human beings have
the same advantages and the use of the same skills, they should
be equal to each other. The state of nature has a law of nature to
govern it. Reason is the law. It teaches that all men are equal
and independent, and that no one ought to harm another in his
life, liberty, or possessions. All men are made by one all-

5. powerful and wise Maker. They are all servants of one Master
who sent them into the world to do His business. He has put
men naturally into a state of independence, and they remain in it
until they choose to become members of a political society.”
For Thomas Hobbes:
“NATURE hath made men so equal in the faculties of body and
mind as that, though there be found one man sometimes
manifestly stronger in body or of quicker mind than another, yet
when all is reckoned together the difference between man and
man is not so considerable as that one man can thereupon claim
to himself any benefit to which another may not pretend as well
as he. For as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength
enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination or by
confederacy with others that are in the same danger with
himself.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau highlights the equality of individuals
being further bolstered by the Social Contract:
“I shall end this chapter and this book by remarking on a fact on
which the whole social system should rest: i.e., that, instead of
destroying natural inequality, the fundamental compact
substitutes, for such physical inequality as nature may have set
up between men, an equality that is moral and legitimate, and
that men, who may be unequal in strength or intelligence,
become every one equal by convention and legal right” (SC I:
9).
From these ideas, our founders conceive our liberty as equality
for each individual before the law. That each individual has
“inalienable rights” from “nature or nature’s God.” Simply your
rights exist because you exist. They are not based on any sort of
collective identity. Your rights are not from the government.
Your rights are not from your country of citizenship. They are
not from your bloodline or based on your last name. They are
not based upon any condition other than that you exist.
Those were the ideas captured by our founders in the
Declaration of Independence and captured by Lincoln in the
Gettysburg address. In each instance, the idea of liberty as

6. individual equality before the law was a revolution.
Terms of the Contract: Right of Revolution
The right of revolution essentially is the right to challenge,
overthrow, or absolve the government and is a critical
component of the Social Contract.
For Hobbes, the state of nature was so bleak that an individual
only had a right of revolution if the “Leviathan” threatened an
individual’s life. For in that instance, life under the Leviathan
was no better than being under the state of nature.
However, for Locke, the right to revolution rested at a much
lower threshold. Locke argued:
“But if a long train of abuses, lies, and tricks make a
government's bad intentions visible to the people, they cannot
help seeing where they are going. It is no wonder that they will
then rouse themselves, and try to put the rule into hands, which
will secure to them the purpose for which government was
originally organized.”
Locke’s language may sound quite familiar. Here’s the text of
our own Declaration of Independence:
“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing
invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them
under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to
throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their
future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these
Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them
to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the
present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries
and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of
an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts
be submitted to a candid world.”
Sources
Hamilton, A., & Rossiter, C. (1961). The Federalist papers;
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay. New York: New
American Library.
Hobbes, T., & Tuck, R. (1991). Leviathan. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

7. Locke, J. (1986). The Second Treatise on Civil Government.
Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
Rousseau, J. (1968). The Social Contract. Harmondsworth:
Penguin.
Week 1,Lecture C: "What Should that Government Look Like?
On July 4, 1776 America made official its independence from
England and forever changed the course of human history. As
the war of independence raged on, the thirteen colonies
attempted to remain united against England. In 1781 the
Articles of Confederation went into effect and the situation
went from bad to worse. Once the war was settled with England
with a treaty signed in 1783, there was no longer any shared
threat to keep the colonies united.
It was hard enough keeping the thirteen colonies cooperating
during the war. No one wanted to pay for the war if the other
colonies hadn’t. Once the war was resolved, there was certainly
no higher cause for the states to remain united on.
Under the Articles of Confederation, the national government,
via the national congress, had no power to enforce any law or
national policy. Very quickly thirteen states all began acting as
thirteen separate nations. There was no common military (and
certainly no way to pay for it). Some states were slave while
others were free. States started fighting over unclaimed western
lands and their shared boundaries. Many of these squabbles
were infused with religious rivalries as the colonies featured
long histories of competing Christians of one denomination
persecuting those of other Christian denominations.
Pennsylvania, for example, despite being the most democratic of
the states, persecuted Quakers. Despite being predominantly
Christian (many states required political leaders to swear being
Christians to hold office) the Christians of early America
simply couldn’t get along with each other.

8. With all these sources of faction, there was the looming threat
that France, England, Spain or even Russia could undermine and
reconquer the new nation by playing each regional and religious
faction against the other.
In 1787 a group of leaders met in Philadelphia under a fair
amount of secrecy. The nation with her thirteen sovereign states
was failing. The question these founders had was how to apply
the principles of the Declaration of Independence. The
Declaration had the right principles for our new nation, but it
didn’t prescribe any means for the practical, real world, day to
day operations of a government carrying out those principles.
The mechanism the founders created to apply the principles of
our national independence was a new Constitution.
Constitution Democracy: Government limited to powers given it
in Constitution in order to protect individual liberty. It is the
social contract codified in written form.
As we embark on our journey examining what this new nation
looked like under the Constitution, we will begin to see several
key themes captured in our Constitution. These are: Federalism;
Separation of Powers; the tension between democracy and
republicanism; and finally the tension between individual rights
and our tragic history with slavery.
An Important Note:
Throughout this course we will be reading “primary sources.”
Primary sources are original or historical texts. They are not the
words of another (for example, what you would read in a text
book), therefore they are more reliable than secondary sources.
Have you ever played the game telephone? Someone starts a
message and tries to relay it to you through several other people
before it hits your ears. When you finally do hear the message it
often is very different from the original. Instead of getting our
information via intermediaries, using primary sources is like
getting the message straight from the origin in our telephone
game.
Federalism
A main idea of our founders was that anytime some element of

9. our political society had power it had to be balanced and
checked by another source of power. Power in our political
system was split between the states and the national federal
government. The new federal government had to be sufficiently
strong enough to avoid the problems of the Articles of
Confederation, whilst being able to protect individual rights,
whilst preserving as many powers of the states (and local
governments) as possible.
Consider all of the overlapping layers of governance that have
jurisdiction over you at this moment. There is the federal
government, the government of the state that you hold residence
in, the government of the county that you hold residence in,
your city or municipality, your school district, your
homeowners association, voluntary groups that you are a part of
such as churches, and that is not all! Maybe you’re like me; I
live in Missouri, but my work at Grantham University is in the
City of Lenexa, in Johnson County, in the State of Kansas! If I
run a business from within the City of Kansas City but have to
consider the laws and tax codes of other jurisdictions I might be
doing business in. If you are serving our country, even overseas,
you have the additional requirements of the military and UCMJ.
Within each of these jurisdictions we have legislative, executive
(including bureaucratic), and judicial offices – some are
elected, others are appointed or hired.
The division of powers through federalism certainly is
complicated. In fact there are over 10,000 separate and
overlapping tax jurisdictions in our country alone! This reality
has a huge impact on all matters of politics and commerce in
our nation. For example, recently Congress has considered
allowing states to collect sales taxes on purchases made online.
Here’s why this gets complicated: If I purchase a product at a
store in Missouri, I pay Missouri sales tax. If I go to Kansas to
make a purchase, I pay Kansas sales tax despite being a resident
of the state of Missouri. Missouri only taxes tangible goods,
while Kansas taxes tangible goods and some services – for
example, I always have my car washed in Missouri because it

10. would be taxed in Kansas but not in Missouri! I also purchase
my gas in Missouri because, Missouri has a smaller gas tax and
thus the price of gas is less expensive. I have the convenience
of living a few blocks from a state line, while others do not.
But what if I purchase or sell an item online? Who do I pay
taxes to? Technically, I am physically located in Missouri, so
that creates what is called a “Nexus” in Missouri. But, if I am
buying a pair of shoes on Amazon from a seller in Florida,
should they be responsible for figuring out my tax code and
sending it to the appropriate city, county, and state governments
in Missouri? Should they have to do this for each of the over
10,000 separate tax jurisdictions? Should I as the consumer?
What if I am at work in Kansas, but a resident of Missouri,
while buying shoes online from a seller located in Florida? Can
a state, county, or city that I don’t reside it hold me responsible
for paying taxes in their jurisdiction? If they do, isn’t this
inconsistent with “no taxation without representation”? The
point is that federalism gets really complicated very quickly!
However, these are important issues that you will regularly deal
with if you want to start a business, work in health care, or
work in criminal justice!
What happens when the rules of one jurisdiction contradict the
rules of another?
Article 6, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution attempts to resolve
this:
“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which
shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or
which shall be made, under the authority of the United States,
shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every
state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or
laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.”
This clause is referred to as the Supremacy Clause. It
essentially creates a hierarchy of law in which Federal Law (and
Federal Court rulings including the Supreme Court) always
supersedes state law – always! Since counties and cities are
created by states, state law supersedes county and municipal

11. law; and so on and so forth.
Consider recent attempts by “Pro-Life” organizations and
officials to restrict access to abortion in several states such as
Texas. Many of these laws have been rejected by the Federal
Courts on the grounds that they violate the Supremacy Clause.
Over 20 U.S. Supreme Court decisions (not just Roe v. Wade)
have contributed to determining that a Woman has a
constitutionally protected right to access an abortion. In the
1992 decision of Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, the Supreme
Court ruled that with regard to a woman’s constitutionally
protected right to access an abortion, “… the undue burden
standard should be employed. An undue burden exists, and
therefore a provision of law is invalid, if its purpose or effect is
to place substantial obstacles in the path of a woman seeking an
abortion before the fetus attains viability” (505 U.S. 833 at
837).
Since the U.S. Supreme Court is a federal court, in addition to
being the highest federal court, these rulings override any state
laws or even changes to individual state constitutions that place
an “undue burden” on a woman accessing an abortion. (Did you
know your state has a constitution as well? However, this state
constitution, per the Supremacy Clause is inferior to all federal
laws, federal court rulings, and the U.S. Constitution.)
Ronald Reagan is famously cited for saying, “The federal
government did not create the states; the states created the
federal government.” But is this actually true? Was the federal
government created by the states or were the states created by
the federal government?
Recall, the circumstances under the Articles of Confederation,
in which each state was sovereign and voluntarily supported the
union, were so terrible that country nearly failed!
In the case of McCulloch v. Maryland, the U.S. Supreme Court
established the precedent that the states (in particular the state
legislatures) are merely the voice or delegates of the people, but
that the people made the Union. The U.S. Constitution begins
with the proclamation, “We the People,” and not “We the

12. States.” Think of it this way: the state of Virginia under the
Articles of Confederation, though occupying a similar
geographic boundary, is not the same as the state of Virginia
under the U.S. Constitution. If they were the same, logically,
only those states that ratified the U.S. Constitution would be
subject to it.
Ronald Reagan’s argument does not have history or legal
precedent on its side. Ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court has
ruled that the states did not create the federal government, and
under the supremacy clause, only a clear change to the U.S.
Constitution itself could alter that understanding.
Separation of Powers
Our founders were afraid of power being concentrated in the
hands of too few people. Therefore, the power of governing in
our nation was split between the legislative, executive, and
judicial branches of government. In this course, we will learn
how each of these branches function and what powers they
have.
The idea of the “separation of powers” was first codified by
Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de
Montesquieu, whom most simply refer to as Montesquieu.
(Pronounced Mon-ta-skew, so when you want to impress your
party guests just ask them what they think of Montesquieu’s
ideas.)
When we speak of the “separation of powers” we are often
referring to the division of authority between the legislative,
executive, and judicial branches of power. As a matter of pure
personal opinion (and with all due respect to Montesquieu), I
actually prefer using the phrase of “competition of powers”
rather than “separation of powers.” In our political culture there
is a myth that in American government that each of the branches
of government have nicely delineated powers that are clearly
delineated from the powers of the other, and that the other
branches, or layers, of government should not infringe upon the
powers of the other. However, as we will see when we read the
Constitution over the next few weeks, this is not the case. The

13. separation of powers, based on the text of the Constitution is
quite messy and, at times, very unclear. In American politics,
we should expect the branches of government to compete over
what powers they each have. We should expect a fierce
competition over powers between the various layers and
branches of government. It is this competition and conflict over
powers that our founders wanted as they believed in fierce
political conflict the powers of each branch would be held in
check.
Democracy versus Republicanism
Democracy is a tyrannical form of government, at least
according to Plato whose view was shared by our founders.
Plato argues in The Republic, Book VI that the general mass of
people are not well informed or even smart enough to make
correct decisions about public policy. Think about some of the
stuff you see on your social media feeds, do you really want
those folks making foreign policy decisions - especially with
nuclear weapons involved?
Plato was also basing his assessment of democracy on the
observation that democracy is merely mob rule, and mobs of
humans tend to do really terrible things to other humans. And
herein lies the brilliance of our founders. They conceived of a
society based on the idea that rights were vested in the
individual and that the laws of this society would deal primarily
with individuals and not groups of people. However, if rights
existed at the individual level, that also meant that in order to
protect liberty, individual rights must be protected against the
whims of the majority. In a Democracy, or majority rule system,
the wish of the majority always wins out. But what if the
majority wants to do something evil (which we have seen
repeatedly done in human history)?
As we will see in this course, our constitutional republic has
several very undemocratic features including: the Electoral
College, Senators selected by the state legislatures (which was
undone by the 17th amendment), a two party system, lifetime
judicial appointments, and a whole host of other institutions to

14. make sure we are not a democracy.
Individual Rights & Slavery
As we have already discussed, a key principle of liberty is that
your individual rights exist because you exist. As the
Declaration of Independence states, your rights are from “nature
or nature’s God.” Your rights are not based on any corporate or
group identity that you hold. As the Declaration of
Independence says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” This means that
your individual rights are not even dependent on a government
grant or a condition of national citizenship. Your rights exist
because you exist - regardless of any other condition or
circumstance.
This idea was captured in the 9th Amendment of the
Constitution which states:
“The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not
be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the
people.”
This means that your rights do not even have to be written down
in law or in the Constitution to exist and be protected by the
government!
As our founders attempted to capture and codify the rights of
man in relation to the power of the nation-state in our founding
documents and through the early years of the union, Southern
slave owners actually argued that they had a right to keep
slaves. These slave states wanted to enjoy the benefits of the
union, yet their claim to a natural right to enslave directly
clashed with the principles outlined in the Declaration, which
declares that, “All men are created equal.” To account for this
inconsistency with the principles of the Declaration, southern
political thought developed to argue that slaves, logically, could
not actually be people. Since, to southern slaveholders, the
slaves were therefore not humans, they did not have to be
afforded the esteem of the Declaration and the protections of

15. the Constitution. This produced one of the vilest forms of
chattel slavery in human history and left an insidious legacy of
racism that we still face in America.
It is important to remember that the U.S. Constitution was not a
perfect document. For all the good that has come of our
Independence and Constitution, we also cannot forget the
horrors of slavery, the vile treatment of racial minorities, the
genocide of Native Americans, and the oppression of women
that has occurred. We must appreciate the good while being
sobered by the atrocities. Only then will we be able to be
vigilant enough to avoid perpetrating similar evils in our future.
Sources
The Bill of Rights: A Transcription. (n.d.). Retrieved March 28,
2016, from
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcr
ipt.html
The Declaration of Independence: A Transcription. (n.d.).
Retrieved March 28, 2016, from
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript
.html
Wilson, J. C., & Hill, G. F. (1910). Plato: Republic. Oxford: W.
Hunt, Oxford Copying Office.