Why I am not an Anarchist

This will be hopefully simple to articulate. Oppression is good.

Oppression is not only good, it is a fundamental principle of civilized society that it is accepted in one form or another. It is not good because it is utopian and perfect, but rather because it produces the least harm. This is evident in how every major political ideology is framed. Consider, that all western political ideologies of any worth favour freedom as their stated objective. None of them disagree that this is the goal but instead, where they disagree is with the circumstances in which the state should or ought to apply power. When to arrest someone? When to cut funding? What to prioritize?

Whatever answer you arrive at, you must recognize that the state suppresses the thing which is not prioritized, and in assuring a freedom, declares every action that could restrict that freedom criminal. Even if your ideology favours social justice and LGBT rights over the rights of everyone else, by prioritizing their freedoms you restrict the freedoms of others fundamentally. 

This is why anarchism will never work because it attempts to create a society free from oppression, except that society is founded on, and must have oppression enforced by a central government with a monopoly on violence. Under an anarchist state of affairs, everyone is either a policeman unto himself, or nobody has the right to police anything, and neither of these is a possible choice for a complex society. The difference between a society of policemen and a society without the right to police is only a difference in name, in reality both mean that violence is an open avenue for anyone and any application of right and wrong to any situation.

Of course oppression is not something that people consider desirable consciously. Nobody will try to sell it as desirable, because we all want to be free. Freedom however, was never intended as an absolute result of constitutional government. Constitutional systems merely enshrine rights and division of powers, with the intention of keeping the amount and severity of oppression in line with a set of values which are themselves intended to promote human flourishing.

This concept cannot be simplified into the idea of personal freedom at all costs, it is rather more like a carefully crafted timepiece. One that has taken 3,000 years to arise naturally from ancient kingships, gradually creating a separation of powers into judicial, executive and legislative powers, and which, at some point, also developed a sense of humanism and a recognition of freedom as a value, not as an end in itself. The end result of this 3,000 year evolution is modern western liberal democracy, something which the last 150 years of intellectual critique could scarce come to terms with in so little time.

This in short, is why I am not an anarchist.