Rachel Taylor
Government
Tom Woods
04/09/15
Review Assignment Week 11
Describe the models of society laid out by Althusius and Hobbes.
Althusius described society has a series of many levels. He stated that the primary unit was the family. Then he went on to say that groups of may form families villages. After this, groups of villages may form provinces. These provinces then may form groups and become a kingdom. There is a federative policy. Power is shared by various social authorities. Power not held monopolistically by a central government. These social authorities have rights and liberties of their own. These rights and liberties preceded the central government and cannot be arbitrarily interfered with or cancelled by it. Hobbes’ model is quite different. He stated that society was as a flat plan. There was not a diverse array of social authorities; just a mass of individuals. The individuals, in turn, endow a central government with the power to rule over them. No other social authority precedes this central government. So no competing power centers in society have the power to resist the government. This is very opposite of the federative authority of Althusius.
What are the compact and nationalist theories of the Union?
The compact theory states that the Union is a collection of states. The Union was created by the states. The states are the original units. The nationalist theory is that the Union is a single whole. They believe that the Union came first; the states exist only as part of the Union. They say that the Union is the original unit. Why do these theories matter? There are some specific consequences of each theory. In the compact theory, the states can resist the government if the government goes beyond their authority. In the nationalist theory, the government has the right to govern with no other protests. Can history resolve this? Yes. Did the states come before the Union? Yes. The Declaration of Independence states: “free independent states” that “have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and so all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.” The states were already independent before the Declaration of Independence in 1776. In the Treaty of Paris, the British acknowledged the independence not of single blob, but of a group of states, which they proceeded to list one by one. The states performed activities that we associate with sovereignty. Massachusetts, Connecticut, and South Carolina outfitted ships to cruise against the British. It was troops of Connecticut that took Ticonderoga. In New Hampshire, the executive was authorized to issue letter of marque and reprisal. In 1776 it was declared that the crime of treason would be thought of as being perpetrated not against the states united into an indivisible blob, but against states individually. These theories correspond to the Althusius and Hobbes divide. If the compact theory is correct, then the United States initially defied the spread of Hobbesian ideas.
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