CPAC 2014: Why anarchy fails

Brenner Brief ^ | March 13, 2014 | Amanda Read

[SincerelyAmanda]

The 2014 Conservative Political Action Conference drew a fairly international swarm of conservatives possessing a variety of ideas about limiting and specializing the role of civil government. The obfuscations of a (to use Congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s term) plus sized, overreaching bureaucracy have made some young people wonder why we need a civil government in the first place and why we can’t have anarchy instead.

How do you respond to the statement: ”The system isn’t broken; the system never worked”?...

[Olog-hai]

There’s a reason why this phrase is repeated twice in the Bible: Every man did that which was right in his own eyes (Judges 17:6 and 21:25; alluded to in Proverbs 21:2). There is no freedom without the right kind of laws.

[daniel1212]

Both the church and America (and i do not mean to combine them as one) began in principled dissent to established authority, which esp. in the first place, had rendered itself fit to be replaced in Divine providence, but in neither case was it driven by a basic animosity toward authority in general (though many of America's Founders had an animosity toward institutionalized religion).

Thus they replaced one authority with another, with a transcendent document being the supreme authority, not one man or group of men of the earth, esp. in the former case, and not consequently in practice in the latter. .

[dr_lew]

Proverbs 1:18 And they lay wait for their own blood; they lurk privily for their own lives.

I call this the argument from Thermodynamics.

[Darren McCarty]

I’d love to be an anarchocapitalist. That’s not possible, so I am a minimalist. Government should be as small and local as possible.

[Pontiac]

Anarchy

n

1. Absence of any form of political authority.

Look to Somalia if you want an example an anarchistic society.

Not society I would want to inhabit.

[FreedomPoster]

Subsidiary is a term/concept you are looking for.

“Subsidiarity is an organising principle of decentralisation, stating that a matter ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest, or least centralised authority capable of addressing that matter effectively.”

Subsidiarity plus small, limited government is, indeed, a winning combination. Too bad we practice it so little these days.

[Daveinyork]

I think I remember that G-d warned His people against having a King, and also decreed that the King should live by the same laws as the people.

[Olog-hai]

Moses warned about that way back in Devarim (Deuteronomy) 17:14-20, too. It was a foretelling of the events that would lead to the coronations of both the kings Saul and David. Take note of verse 15 especially.

[Daveinyork]

I was referring to that passage.