Anarchy

Unfortunately, anarchists don’t usually have - as opposed to reformists - a replacement government in mind.  They just have anarchy in mind, with the hope that some new phoenix will rise from the ashes to save us all after the burning pile of rubble that was democracy is left smoldering on the ground.  But the children’s song ‘London Bridge is Falling Down’ betrays them in that phoenixes do not rise from ashes; phoenixes are mythical creatures, much like their projected new leader.  As the song says, “ashes, ashes, we all fall down.”  That may be a stretch to take a child’s song to commemorate the effects of the bubonic plague on Europe and overlay it to anarchist regime, but I’m afraid the overlay fits quite nicely in this instance.  The storming of the Bastille in 1789 was thought to be the breach in the dam in constructing a new and prosperous society and demolishing the old strongholds that had for too long enslaved the common man.  It was thought this would bring an end to tyranny.  What it brought was more exposed carotids and jugulars lying in the streets than ever before.  This was “The Purge” in real life.  And that is all we can ever hope from anarchy; an incorrigible rabid dog sweeping in the shadows – always hungry, always dangerous.  One anarchist may think to himself, “If I flip this car and set it on fire, that will get ‘someone’s attention, and they will listen to my grievance.”  Most of the other anarchists are thinking, “Hey, that guy’s flipping a car.  Let’s help, and then let’s do some more.”  Destruction has the curious facet of being self-limiting, however.  Eventually resources get scarce, after the looting and pillaging domino effect has run its course, and the snake has to eat its own tail.  I am not saying anarchy is the worst society possible; I am saying that it never leads to a better one.  

On the night Malchus had his ear relived from his head, though he was carrying a club or spear, he was not an anarchist.  He was part of a sentinel dispatch of a very well organized, well-tiered society, sent out to suppress what was perceived to be an anarchist-type rebellion.  Though Jesus of Nazareth, the One that Malchus’s unit was sent out to detain was not an anarchist, he knows what it’s like to be treated as one.