Here is Albert Jay Nock’s classic study on the life and thought of Thomas Jefferson, a book which draws out points other biographers have missed: his radicalism, his opposition to all centralized government, his attachment to liberty and property, and his dedication to the idea of revolution. In the process, Nock tells a story of the founding that
Albert Jay Nock, perhaps the most brilliant American essayist of the 20th century, and certainly among its most important libertarian thinkers, set out to write his autobiography but he ended up doing much more. He presents here a full theory of society, state, economy, and culture, and does so almost inadvertently. His stories, lessons,
This wonderful collection of essays by Albert Jay Nock, first published in 1928, includes his “Anarchist’s Progress,” “Thoughts on Revolution,” “The Decline of Conversation,” and other classics by this great American essayist and influential libertarian
[This is Albert Jay Nock’s (1870–1945) introduction to Spencer’s forgotten 1884 classic, The Man versus the State .] In 1851 Herbert Spencer published a treatise called Social Statics; or, The Conditions Essential to Human Happiness Specified. Among other specifications, this work established and made clear the fundamental principle that society
This essay first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in 1936. An MP3 version of this article, read by Dr. Floy Lilley, is available for free download . I One evening last autumn, I sat long hours with a European acquaintance while he expounded a political-economic doctrine which seemed sound as a nut and in which I could find no defect. At the end,
[Excerpted from chapter 5 of Albert Jay Nock’s Jefferson ] The Constitution looked fairly good on paper, but it was not a popular document; people were suspicious of it, and suspicious of the enabling legislation that was being erected upon it. There was some ground for this. The Constitution had been laid down under unacceptable auspices; its
[This article is excerpted from chapter 5 of Albert Jay Nock’s Jefferson .] The debate over funding and assumption [of the states’ Revolutionary War debt] was at its height when Mr. Jefferson took his place in the cabinet. There was relatively little trouble about funding, but assumption was dragging its keel; it failed in the House, but was
[ Jefferson (1926; 2007)] Throughout the period of his ambassadorship, Mr. Jefferson found little doing in the way of business. Vergennes was polite, considerate, straightforward. They discussed one article of commerce after another, but could never come to much more than nominal terms. In the matter of rice, flour, fish, and “provisions of all
[ On Doing the Right Thing , chapter 3, “The Decline of Conversation.”] Speaking as Bishop Pontoppidan did about the owls in Iceland, the most significant thing that I have noticed about conversation in America is that there is so little of it, and as time goes on there seems less and less of it in my hearing. I miss even so much of the free play
[ Snoring as a Fine Art, and Twelve Other Essays (1958)] My first and only presidential vote was cast many, many years ago. It was dictated by pure instinct. I remember the circumstances well. Like all well-brought-up youngsters, I had been told that it was the duty of every citizen to vote — reasons not stated. I was prepared to obey in all good
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.