The 2008 presidential election is history now, and Barack Obama is President-Elect. I still don’t quite believe it. I voted for him, but perhaps only because last week I heard a comment from some guy in Pennsylvania who said he wouldn’t vote the Obama-Biden ticket for racist reasons. How stupid is that? Think about it: most people are such schmucks that there are dozens of reasons to dislike them — why pick color??

So why did Obama win? One would hope because he’s intelligent and articulate, but some might say he had the better marketing team.  I can be quite the cynic when it comes to politics, but I did start thinking about something I learned earlier this year as I listened to some of the UC Berkeley history lectures. I heard the nation-state described as an entity with a “monopoly on legitimate violence.” Living in society necessarily involves coercion: you give up doing exactly as you please, and in return, you expect some benefits with respect to stability and order, maybe even panem et circenses.

Perhaps the majority of American citizens really did feel that their government had reneged on its obligations, and Obama convinced us that he was the person who would ratify the social contract we’ve all implicitly signed. All our presidents swear to defend the Constitution, which itself states that the people intend to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty.”