Was Hobbes Right?

Louisiana are pretty remarkable. Gunmen targeting medical convoys. Widespread looting. Here’s some aerial photography that shows the water covering neighborhoods.  Here’s a link to a photo series from the WashingtonPost (if this link doesn’t work for you there’s a link from the post home page).  Its unbelievable to see what’s going on and disheartening to watch some of the behavior that is emerging in what has become somewhat of a lawless area (I’m not talking about people stealing groceries to live on – I’m talking about the people looting from jewelry stores and the like).  Reports of the devastation in

In one of my philosophy classes in college we read Hobbes and Rousseau back to back and had to write a paper on who had the correct view on society (Hobbes’ premise that society and laws were needed to keep human nature, which was inherently bad, in check or Rousseau who argued that humans were born good and that it was society that corrupted us).  I’m not sure which of these views is supported by what we’re witnessing, but either way it’s a sad commentary on the state of our society (to say nothing of how unprepared government agencies seemed to be to deal with a disaster that was days in the making).

Ugh.