Hobbes is easily the most pessimistic philosopher in history, which is one of the reasons I've always loved him. His vision was of a society composed of men "in a state of war" against one another -- until a "common power" slaps 'em around and forces them to behave. My second-year professor of political philosophy put it this way: "If Machiavelli's philosophy discovered a bold new world of self-interest amongst the elites, Hobbes landed on those shores, cut down the trees, and built Orillia." (This joke will mean nothing to people who don't know that Orillia is a trackless suburban moonscape about two hours north of Toronto. Indeed, Orillia is so bleak that it's a punch line that needs no joke.)

But I digress. The point is, my friend Erik at his blog Culture Raven has been observing a rise in Hobbesian punditry. It seems that today's pundits are finding many parallels between Hobbes' Leviathan and today's America. One is Paul Johnson, who penned a recent essay "Leviathan to the Rescue" for the National Review.

The fun part, though, is Erik's hilarious ad hominem analysis of Johnson's motivations. I won't give it away -- go read it here.