What is authority? Well, let us first say that Christ is King and that Christ is Authority, and that modernity is the attempt to do away with authority and replace it with power. All that is needed, modernity says, because all there is, is coercive power. And there never was authority, only power, power pretending to be authority. Authority is the mask that power once used effectively to coerce. It functioned well for a time, but since the Enlightenment, and especially after Foucault and what is called the Holocaust, its mask is off now, for we all know now that all there is is power. Victims now have all the power, or those who claim to be victims. It’s better that the mask is off and gone, because just the appearance of the mask might lead one to think that authority actually exists, exists apart from power, exists even above power, and this could threaten the exclusive hegemony of power.
Thanks, Thaddeus, I crossposted this piece. Looking forward to part 2
This put precisely into words something I had been thinking about for a while now— thank you!