Anarchize

a. To bring into a state of anarchy. Anarchy, ( an'dr - ke ,) n. [From Gr. a, priv., and arc he , government; Fr. anarchie .] ( Polit . ) Properly, the entire absence of political government; the condition of a society or collection of human beings inhabiting the same country, who are not subject to a common sovereign. Every society of persons living in a state of nature (as it is termed) is in a state of anarchy; whether that state of nature should exist in a society which has never known political rule, as a horde of savages; or should arise in a political society in consequence of resistance on the part of the subjects to the sovereign, by which the person or persons in whom the sovereignty is lodged are forcibly deprived of that power. Such intervals are commonly of short duration; but after most revolutions, by which a violent change of government has been effected, there has been a short period during which there was no person or body of persons who exercised the executive or legislative sovereignty, that is to say, a period of A. -Anarchy is sometimes used in a transferred or improper sense to signify the condition of a political society, in which, according to the writer or speaker, there has been an undue remi ne or supinene of the sovereign, and especially of those who wield the executive power. In the former sense, A. means the state of a society in which there is no political government; in its second sense, it means the state of a political society in which there has been a deficient exercise of the sovereign power. As an insufficiency of government is likely to lead to no government at all, the term A. has, by a common exaggeration, been used to signify the small degree, where it properly means the entire absence.