Day: October 5, 2012

I am aware of a rather glaring contradiction or even hypocrisy in myself: I declare myself sympathetic to anarchism on the one hand, but on the other I'm a huge defender of rule-of-law for rule-of-law's sake. Without getting overly analytical, I'll merely observe that I ran across some thought-provoking notions in a recent semi-book-review at Bleeding Heart Libertarians, of a book by James C. Scott entitled Two Cheers for Anarchism. Most notably, I like the concept of "anarchist calisthenics" – the idea that we should seek out and break irrational laws merely to keep our libertarian selves in shape, so to speak. And yet… I resist it. I'm one of those people who sees some inherent good in obeying the law for its own sake, and it's one of the things that I point to as a success in South Korea – the transition, in the last several decades, to a (mostly) rule-of-law based society. So how can I resolve this paradox?