'The Ox-Bow Incident'

There's a sentiment nowadays that people don't know how to handle life. Circumstances, bad luck, stupidity, maybe upbringing and a shitload of other factors disallow people from living a normal life.

People try to make money without working. People win the lottery only to wind up in the news for something totally unrelated, eventually letting those funds escape through the cracks of their lives.

I generally feel this way. It came in college. It was a political science class, junior year, and the professor was lecturing on Thomas Hobbes, the author of "Leviathan," who believed in a strong central government because, for lack of a better term, people were batshit crazy and couldn't handle living life on their own terms and rules.

Thus, a government was needed to create and enforce rules because people were inherently bad and the only way to battle their carnal instincts was to govern and govern some more. This goes from the child pornographer to the airline that can save a billion dollars if it discontinues certain maintenance or regulatory actions. The child pornographer is just bad and the airline exec is always trying to boost the bottomline.

If you need a lesson in liberalism or Hobbesian theory of social contract, watch "The Ox-Bow Incident." It's a sickening story of two-bit law enforcers wrongly lynching three men obviously innocent of murdering a rancher. People need guidance, boundaries and authority or else we'd rip each other to shreds. Animals.