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The Empty Idea of Authority
The idea of authority is a fabrication. Claims of moral right to be obeyed owe their historic salience to the self-interest of claimants. When Enlightenment scholars demolished the divine right of kings, they should have disabused us of the right, not just of the notions that it came from the divine and belonged to kings. Their effort to salvage the idea of right to rule and to press it into serving as support for their favored governments was understandable but unjustified.

Claims of moral right to be obeyed have their origins in creationist accounts of law and government. ...