Hobbes as Liberal

Where would Jesus go to worship?  Should we expect Jesus to show up at a Catholic Mass or a Lutheran service?  Maybe we would find him in back at the Synagogue?  What about Hobbes?  Would he hang-out with the realists or with the liberals?  The comparison struck me as we discussed the nature of Hobbes' philosophical underpinnings because both men are so central to the belief system of their followers, but perhaps in both examples the followers are only utilizing the teachings to create their own lessons.

I am not so sure that the way that we (especially non-IR experts like me) understand the terms "Realist" and "Liberal" in the same way that these terms would have been conceived of in the early Enlightenment.  Our modern Liberal-Realist paradigm is corrupted by liberal-conservative or Democrat-Republican politics.

Adam Smith certainly considered himself a Liberal, but his writings are used by modern day conservatives to justify the glorification of the free-market above any government action or intervention.  To oversimplify, Smith's "Liberalism" was based on the idea of human freedom/liberty.  Individual consumers are better served by an unregulated market because competition  improves production and decreases price.  Producers are likewise rewarded for innovation.
Yet, since 1776 many have realized that Smith's ideal world of free-market capitalism does not match the reality of the market place.  Progressives, Socialists, and Democrats offered solutions that maintain the most vibrant aspects of capitalism while attempting to ameliorate or control conditions were poverty leads to less liberty or where monopolies destroy competition.  Smith addressed some of these concerns but for conservatives he stands for only one thing, "Unregulated Free-Markets".

I think the same may be true of Hobbes.  Realists have seized upon his ideas of anarchy and sovereignty to justify a laissez-faire approach to international governance.  I read Hobbes as concerned with improving the conditions of man from the state of nature.  His discusion of the labeling of sovereigns as tyrants by those that oppose them is interesting.  But I don't think that Hobbes belongs in in the Enlightened tradition if his philosophy dictates that governments, once formed, are allowed to be despotic.  If life without a sovereign is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" then certainly Hobbes would not approve of modern day dictatorships whose citizens' lives are collectively poor, nasty, brutish, and arbitrarily ended.

This might all go back to the discussion of language.  Before we can decide if Hobbes is a liberal or a realist we have to determine what we mean by these terms.  Hobbes spent a good portion of Leviathan laying out the definitions, maybe we can do it on a few blog pages.