The war on terror : tensions in the social contract post-September 11

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2004
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Haverford College. Department of Political Science
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Thesis
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eng
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Open Access
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Abstract
This thesis attempts to analyze the theoretical roots of leadership post-9/11. Since modern political discourse is derived from social contract theory of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many of the tensions and contradictions today can actually be rooted back to the works of Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and John Locke. By analyzing the connections between Hobbes and President George W. Bush, and Rousseau and civil liberties proponents, this thesis locates where the two parties talk past each other based on their assumptions of human nature and the role of the body politic. While each opponent inherits their respective theorist's strengths, they also inherit his weaknesses. By using a third approach--a Lockean approach--to the War on Terror, leaders can potentially find a balance between the extremes of Hobbes and Locke.
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