Tibor Machan to Joseph Sobran:
Apropos your mention of The Law's thesis: in Xenophon's Memorabilia (i, 2, 40-46) we find the young Alcibiades in a debate with Pericles; here Xenophon records a lengthy argument in which Alcibiades pushes Pericles into a corner. The idea is that if law serves to protect against force, then law must not initiate force; thus any law that does so, is invalid.
As Alcibiades puts it, "Isn't it lawlessness if a tyrant does not use persuasion, but instead enacts measures and forces the citizens to carry them out?" And he adds, "Would we, or would we not, call it force when a few in power enact measures for the people without using persuasion....isn't it force rather than law if the majority, prevailing over those who have money, make proposals and do not use persuasion?"
This argument is of the reductio ad absurdum kind and is surely effective
as a destroyer of the idea of law as coercion.
