It was your wording, not necessarily your position, that prompted the comparison.

Fair enough, but I stand by the position

http://rulingclass.wordpress.com/2011/12/07/essay-on-the-state-of-nature-part-i/

My position is more or less moral contractarianism, and i would dispute equating it with a refusal to gaze into galileo’s telescope.

The whole point of “the State of Nature construct” was to legitimize the rationality/necessity of self-ownership violations regarding government.

That’s its point in Hobbes. But in Locke it has the dual function of authorising government and placing constraints on government. And over time, in one strand of liberalism at least, the second function waxed while the first function waned, until state-of-nature theory turned into an argument for anarchism. It was to resist this tendency that a different strand of liberalism pushed farther and farther in the direction of hypothetical rather than actual consent (with public-reason contractualism being the latest flower on this vine).

To me it’s clear that there is no moral foundation for a libertarian social theory. I wouldn’t bother looking for it.

“I do not wish to approve of claims about which I do not have any knowledge, and about things which I have not seen; and then to observe through those glasses gives me a headache. Enough! I do not want to hear anything more about this.” — Cesare Cremonini

“on which state coercion is permitted only when persons cannot reasonably reject the rules or principles on which the coercion is based.”

Of course, the problem is the enforceability of the constraint.

Historically, self-ownership, in liberal social contract theory, has never been “too consequence-insensitive.” The whole point of “the State of Nature construct” was to legitimize the rationality/necessity of self-ownership violations regarding government.

To me it’s clear that there is no moral foundation for a libertarian social theory. I wouldn’t bother looking for it.

Moore and Gibbons already told the Watchmen characters’ back stories. We already know what we need to know about them. No further information is necessary. I would oppose the project even if Moore and Gibbons were behind it. I opposed the new Star Wars trilogy because Lucas was merely telling a story he had already told in the original trilogy.

I am not opposed to something like “The Seven Percent Solution” or “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes” because we don’t know much about the Holmes/Watson et al. characters. It’s easy to add or subtract information in the same style as Doyle because we aren’t given much information in the first place. Holmes’ personal history isn’t relevant to the stories. The Watchmen characters’ biographies are integral to the larger Watchmen story. Re-writing those biographies could harm the way people think about the original story.