Warrants *
Conservatives speak highly of law, because law implies fairness and legitimacy; but conservatives have no respect for rules or order, only for hierarchy.
It was so when the optimates wept over the violation of norms in Ancient Rome (but illegally murdered democratically-elected populists), it was so when medieval nobility pled legal order as to the reason why peasants had to stay in their place (even as they routinely violated the rights of their vassals), it was so when capitalist robber-barons demanded state support for suppressing strikers (but hired illegal thugs to murder strikers anyway on the unusual occasions when the government wasn’t quite corrupt enough to back them), it was so when Chief fucking Thog claimed an extra 1/3 of the hunt’s meat under ‘traditional rules’ in some prehistoric Alpine tribe, but forbade Huntsman Trog from his share because Trog looked at him funny.
It’s so now.
Fuck.
it’s “law” because laws can be injust- for example Jim Crow Laws.
it’s “order” because it’s their definition of order- no prototests, no one rocking the boat, everyone keeping their heads down trying to avoid running afoul of the “laws” that aren’t just.
I’m a big fan of having robust laws. but the laws have to be just and fair; or else they’re the problem. We’ve never really had just and fair laws in this country.
I mean, not that I disagree that laws can be unjust or that law in this country has generally been unfair and unjust, but conservatives are uninterested in even unjust laws in-alignment with their values, or with order as an objective value.
Jim Crow laws did not cause conservatives, for example, to adhere to them - conservatives violated Jim Crow whenever they could, however they could, to their advantage, even while preaching the value of Jim Crow to society at-large. Even when there is calm in a society, conservatives do not hesitate to riot and form lynch mobs, even when their own preferred laws are in-place and look likely to punish the offender in the way that they believe the offender should be punished.
Conservatives care for nothing but hierarchy, and its abuse. They will never be allies of any law or rules, not even their own; and they will never be contributors to order, save insofar as it is imposed upon them.
