Tyranny and anarchy are not opposites, but brothers, twins even. The tyrant is the man who is "above the law," he is Junger's "anarch". Not only civilization, but freedom itself is founded upon law. The march toward freer society has been nothing more than a march toward rule of law, which is to say ensuring that all are subjected to the same law. Both reactionaries and leftists might well disagree, for the reactionaries will say that the king is the foundation of society rather than the law, and leftists will say the law itself can become a tyrant.
To reactionaries I answer that however much they exalt the "divine right of kings," the Bible itself is clear that God intended rule of law: he established a law, and set judges over the Israelites; they themselves, incapable of this society, eventually demanded a king instead. God warned them in no uncertain terms that a king would be an oppressor, but they demanded one anyway, and so he granted them such. In this no doubt God was prudent, for not every society is fit for rule of law.
To leftists I answer that the law cannot become a tyrant by definition, for the law cannot be above itself, though it might contradict itself; a law can be flawed, every law is. Nonetheless, a flawed law is virtually always preferable to no law. When we seek freedom at the expense of law, we are cutting off our nose to spite our face. When you disregard the law for the sake of freedom, you are leaving the backdoor open to tyranny. Many leftists will claim what I am saying is unfair, for they by no means oppose law as such, but only law as it stands. They say we ought to clear the table of all law, but not to abolish law itself, nay, rather to erect a new law. I tell you that this is unwise, for a law's weight is inextricably bound up with tradition: the American Revolutionaries did not embark upon their enterprise on the basis of abolishing the law to erect a new one, no; their assertion was that the king was suddenly and blatantly violating the law, and so by law they rejected him. Law's value takes time to assert itself; the longer it endures, the greater faith society has in it. And not only that, but it takes time to perfect, to iron out, to make consistent and applicable (this is why I put much more stock in common law than legislated law). I do not mean a change in interpretation, such as the idea of the American Contitution as a "living document," which is reinterpreted to accord with the ideology of the judge; no, to do so in fact destroys the credibility of the law, it makes a fickle panderer of it, ready to quickly betray what it promised to us yesterday because it has a new master now. For we all know that law must change, be corrected, but the fixed meaning of it is what allows us to depend on it in spite of that. Correction of law must always be a change in the law, not in the law's meaning. The very job of the judge is to affirm a fixed meaning, not to affirm a law as subjective.
In closing, law cannot replace God, for law is a matter of justice, whereas Saint Isaac the Syrian rightfully noted that justice is the enemy of mercy. If we seek to be Godly, we must seek to be merciful, not just, for God warned us against judging. Those who seek to impose the norms of their faith through law would be well to keep this in mind. And to those who wish to do away with norms altogether, since we now have law, I caution you: the very reason the law does not legislate norms is not because norms are unimportant, but because society has the agency to do that for itself. If we seek to abolish norms in society, it is inevitable that law will enact them, since we have forfeited, indeed outright rejected, the responsibility.
I invite you to post your perspective on law, as well as any rebuttals you might have to my argument.
