Building a State on Paper

The course's political instruments used in sequence: pick a state of nature, sign what nobody signs, patch consent with a veil, and draw liberty's line.

Step one—choose your emptiness. The state of nature is a load-bearing-wall exercise, and which blueprint you start from decides the building. Hobbes's version—war of all against all, preemption as rationality—justifies a strong sovereign; almost any order beats the alternative. Locke's version—rights intact, inconvenience rather than war, feuds without a referee—justifies a limited state: an umpire hired for a specific job, fireable for cause. Same method, opposite constitutions. The choice of starting picture is the real constitutional convention.