[Verse 1] Picture a world with no badge, no throne, No referee, every soul alone, Grabbing what it wants with a clenched-up fist, That's the puzzle that got philosophers pissed: Why kneel to a king, why bow to a law? The answer's a deal signed in nature's raw— We traded our teeth for a sturdier cage, Called it a contract, scribbled the page. [Chorus] Hobbes and Locke, shake on it, sign on the line, One fears the dark, one trusts the design, Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, short— That's the warning Hobbes brought to court, Locke says rights come stitched in your skin, Life, liberty, property locked within, Consent's the key that opens the gate, Break the promise, you can break the state. [Verse 2] London's bleeding, the Civil War's done, Tom Hobbes writes by candle, trusting no one, Sixteen fifty-one, the Leviathan wakes, A giant made of citizens, for everyone's sake, Hand him the sword, hand him the crown, Better one tyrant than the whole town burned down, "Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"— That's life with no judge, no contract, no court. [Chorus] Hobbes and Locke, shake on it, sign on the line, One fears the dark, one trusts the design, Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, short— That's the warning Hobbes brought to court, Locke says rights come stitched in your skin, Life, liberty, property locked within, Consent's the key that opens the gate, Break the promise, you can break the state. [Verse 3] Forty years on, John Locke takes the pen, Softer story for governing men, Sixteen eighty-nine, Two Treatises bloom, No crushing giant, no permanent doom, We're born with rights nobody can erase, Life and liberty, property, a claim to space, Government's a servant we hire with a vote, And if it turns tyrant, we can rock the boat. [Bridge] Jefferson borrows Locke's borrowed light, "Life, liberty," then he rewrites it right, Pursuit of happiness swapped in for the land, Seventeen seventy-six, revolution planned, Now zoom to nations, no referee above, Countries eye each other, no umpire, no love, Anarchy's the jungle where Hobbes' ghost walks still, States arm themselves against each other's will. [Chorus] Hobbes and Locke, shake on it, sign on the line, One fears the dark, one trusts the design, Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, short— That's the warning Hobbes brought to court, Locke says rights come stitched in your skin, Life, liberty, property locked within, Consent's the key that opens the gate, Break the promise, you can break the state. [Outro] So why obey? Because you agreed, Traded the chaos to plant a seed, Hobbes built the cage, Locke built the door, Now you know what the contract's for.
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