For Leo, men don’t form the state because they want to protect their property; they form the state because his “natural instinct moves him to live in civil society, for he cannot, if dwelling apart, provide himself with the necessary requirements of life, nor procure the means of developing his mental and moral faculties.”
We must discover that real Catholic politics are outside the Lockean spectrum, and we must learn to see ourselves as neither right nor left-Lockeans, but as Catholics, who ought to differ from one another only within the clear bounds of permissible Catholic teaching.
If Locke is representative of “soft-core” individualism, which holds merely that government is purely voluntary and is limited solely to protecting individuals’ property rights, Rothbard is representative of “hard-core” individualism, which holds that the state has no legitimate role whatsoever.
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