[d-ray657]

The social contract is not an explicit document or well-defined law. It is a theory concerning the most just and effective way to live together in a society. It is assumed that one will give up some freedom to act according to the law of the jungle when he receives some implicit promise of security in return. We are presumed to prefer social order over a life that is "nasty, cruel, brutish and short."

The ruler in Ghana is the type of person who the social contract is presumably designed to protect us from - one who asserts power by violence. Tyranny is not accepted as part of the social contract, and the conduct in Ghanna is unquestionably tyrannical.

In our own "more civilized" countries, we will differ over the degree to which society needs to exert authority to assure some social order. Some of us would see the conduct of the robber barons during the industrial revolution as a type of tyranny which would be rejected under the social contract. Some of us might see that any sort of excessive use of wealth to assert power is outside of the social contract. Others, of course, will see the regulation designed to prevent financial tyranny as in itself tyrannical, because it is an assertion of greater influence than that to which we have implicitly consented. Simply because the range of political opinions can run from anarchy to dictatorship, does not mean that an implicit social contract does not exist in that range between the extremes.

Regards,

D-Ray