# Red button or blue button dilemma

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-button-or-blue-button-dilemma/1024041>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [October 16, 2025, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-button-or-blue-button-dilemma/1024041 "2025-10-16T22:59:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 299

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**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\
**Post date:** [October 21, 2025, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-button-or-blue-button-dilemma/1024041/299 "2025-10-21T19:59:54Z")

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> [@robby](#):
>
> the only reason we have a functioning civilization is because there is indeed a state monopoly on violence.

Isn’t that straight out of Thomas Hobbes’s _Leviathan_? That only the iron first of authoritarian government keeps the savages in check? And wasn’t the entire Enlightenment philosophy of the American Founders dedicated to refuting Hobbes, that liberty didn’t mean anarchy and savagery? In discussions in multiple gun control threads I have had occasion to remark that gun control advocates seem to be more afraid of their fellow man than they are of overweening potentially tyrannical government; this seems to exemplify that mindset.

**ETA** : and no, the state does NOT have a monopoly on legitimate violence. People retain a right to lawful self-defense. The state does reflect the consensus of society on what violence is lawful, but not that its agents are an elite caste with the sole privilege of administering it.

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