Kyle Kulinski has an interesting rebuttal to Carlson’s Hobbesian-Burkean perspective.

In his more serious and intelligent moments, Carlson is simply making the Hobbesian argument that order must be maintained at all costs in order for civilization to exist with considerations of “justice,” whatever their merit, being a secondary or tertiary concern.  A similar argument could have been made to defend the rule of Saddam Hussein or Muammar Qaddafi, particularly given what happened to Iraq and Libya post-US/NATO invasion.  Carlson is also making a Burkean argument that whatever the problems with existing institutions, merely burning them down typically makes things even worse. I can respect such arguments even if they’re a bit one-dimensional.

Kulinksi is making the perfectly reasonable observation that the insurrectionists were hardly the ones that started the fight, and that the lumpen violence of the insurrectionists pales in comparison to the institutionalized violence of the power elite. Looting Target is kindergarten compared to killing a million people in the Middle East. But Kyle, unfortunately, falls back on the liberal idealization of the “rule of law.” The law, as anarchists have always pointed out, is primarily an instrument of political, economic, and economic subjugation with the positive benefits of law (like “order”) largely being incidental or geared to serve ruling class interests. OF COURSE, the state is inconsistent in the enforcement of its own laws. Consistency is not the objective. Maintaining power is the objective.