1. Physical force - Thomas Hobbes pointed out that government rests on the capacity to inflict pain and death, physical force. It is as simple as a gunfight in the Old West. Whoever shoots fastest, straightest is in charge.
2. Reason - John Locke argues in fact government is the result of reasonable agreements among humans to create governments to proect their lives, property, pursuit of happiness, etc. The result is our U.S. Constitution, a legal contract, and it reflects the impact of lawyers who come in swarms with commercial societies that need contracts to do business.
Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. He was a lawyer. However, it was George Washington who fought the war, applied the force, to make independence for our country concrete. Gettysburg is another example of how the view of Hobbes, in the final analysis, settles affairs and provides the foundation for governments.
Both Hobbes and Locke lived at the time of the English Civil War, 1641-1648. Hobbes observed brute force in the process. Locke saw struggle for contractual government in the process.
I have seen the writings of Hobbes literally under glass in the British National Museum in London. He is not popular today, because we do not like to face his scenario of what we are.
However, when our police, courts, and prisons refuse to put fear into the predators on the rest of us through measures like capital punishment, good and hard, surely and swiftly, we are going to pay the price of following John Locke's line of thinking. At some point, we will get tough or we shall surely collapse. Hobbes by the way restates the Roman view of things too.
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