Often used in politics, and a favorite among reactionaries, is the word “order”. “Restoring order”, “law and order”, “a smooth and orderly transfer of power”, etc. Paleoconservative commentator Vincent James, undoubtedly echoing Russel Kirk, frequently tells his audience (or at least during the times I tuned in) that order precedes freedom, and this is fundamentally right. Without order there is no freedom, only anarchy. Did Seattle or Portland residents have more or less freedom during the BLM riots? The later. Why? There was a breakdown of order and without order there can be no freedom. Freedom is a potentiality to act (I am free to write on substack, she is free to practice her religion, etc.), and freedom is limited when the potentiality to act is limited, be it by chains preventing A from moving, or a mob looting and burning down the city of Seattle making it impossible for B to leave the house safely. If you value freedom then you have a vested interest in order, whether that means maintaining order or restoring order.
Is order the absence of crime? In part. Looking at the example of the BLM riots, it would appear that lack of order is, in some way, related to criminal activity. Order involves putting an end to criminal activity, but that is not what it is. Order is law, if understood in a certain sense. Most appropriately, order is best understood as balance. Here I rely on Plato, upon whom all philosophy and political theory is, to quote Albert North Whitehead, a footnote. Edmund Burke and John Adams will also be echoed here, seeing that their defense of a tripartite constitution was, though they never say it explicitly, a reformulation of Plato.
There is order in the soul when the intellect rules, when the chest animates, and when the appetites are restrained.1 Souls ruled by the appetites are bestial; souls ruled by the chest are imprudent and foolish. Without a solid chest, a soul cannot be moved to virtuous or heroic action; lacking appetites is unnatural and mechanical; absent of intellect, a soul wanders aimlessly. Each part of the soul has its proper function and order in the soul is when all parts operate according to their function. When there is order in the soul, the person is at peace. He is guided by reason, moved by his chest, and his appetites are restrained as is befitting to a man. If you do not accept this tripartite model of the soul, or if you do not believe we have souls, then treat what has just been said as a poetics used to illustrate the human condition.
How Burke and Adams connect this vision of the soul to a tripartite constitution is predictable: as there are three parts to the soul, so there are three branches of the government and a well-ordered government consists of, like a well-ordered soul, each branch performing its function. Governmental instability is the result of either a) one the branch ceasing to perform its function, or b) when one branch assumes the function of another branch. The former is indicative of governmental breakdown, and is often accompanied by NGOs and corporations taking up the former roles of government or peripheral governmental agencies moving to the center.
Restoring order in the government would mean restoring the proper function to each branch of government, maintaining that balance, and pushing out all NGOs, corporations and peripheral agencies that have taken on either judicial, executive or legislative functions. Lobbying would be ended, the FBI and CIA would be prevented from interfering with the executive’s decisions, and members of congress would have protections against their donors (which is spelled b.l.a.c.k m.a.i.l.e.r.s). Such a task would be hard beyond measure, given how powerful extra-governmental forces are (think Blackrock), and how invested they are in hijacking functions not proper to them.
Understanding order in terms of proper function and balance applies to non-tripartite structures just as well as tripartite structures. Returning to BLM, the disorder in Seattle or Portland can be explained in terms of the police not fulfilling their proper function, letting arsonists and vandals commit crimes unimpeded, and the media taking on a function, namely the judiciary, that is not theirs. Out of the two possible ways balance between functions can be disturbed, those being one member of society ceasing to perform its proper function and one member of society taking on the function proper to another, both occurred and thus led to chaos seen in Seattle and Portland in the summer of 2020.
Restoring order in the cities would mean allowing, and ensuring, that the police force fulfill their proper function of enforcing the law. It would also mean preventing all extra-judicial actors from assuming the role of the judiciary. If the latter is not done, whatever good that the police force might do will be undone as the media, or whatever other extra-judicial actor assumes the role of judge, has the ability to determine the legality of not only the criminals in question, but of also the police. Before any rioter was brought before court, the media, acting as judiciary, ruled that they were “peaceful protestors” and that the police were “Stormtroopers", and it was this, in conjunction with the police either not being able to perform their function or being unwilling to do so, that led to the disorder in Seattle and Portland.
What is order? Order is the state in which all members of a whole fulfill their proper function and the balance between these members and functions is maintained and secured against interference. Restoring order means returning the proper function of each member of a whole back to its proper member.
Intellect is the faculty of reason, that with which we think. Chest will be used here to refer to what is sometimes called the heart or spirit, what the ancient Greeks called the thumos, and is that part of us where honor, courage and strength is found. Appetites refer not only to the craving for food, but also the craving for sex, power, repute and ease.