ABSTRACT
The enemies of authority are found as much on the political right as on the political left. If we limit ourselves to the terminology familiar to America, we can say that libertarians on the one end of the spectrum and anarchists on the other share a number of common beliefs about the function of authority. On issues like the legalization of drugs, pornography, abortion, and so on their conclusions are identical, even though not their motives. Human beings tend to regard realizations which transcend their own short lives and their own self-centered preoccupations with a certain amount of awe, whether these realizations are things concentrated by time, tradition, public respect, or general admiration. The restoration of authority is inseparable from a certain loss of freedom. This is inevitable since the absence of authority accustoms people to all the freedom they want. An increasing number of political writers, in the Anglo-Saxon world, too, subscribes to this analysis.
