All Posts Tagged With: "Albert Jay Nock"
Growing Government Ensures “National Greatness”?
There is widespread belief among politicians, public officials, and pundits that if government doesn’t give us the seeds, nothing will grow. A friend of mine served on our city’s legislative council for eight years. During that time he often heard—in defense of tax-funded business incentives—“If we don’t do something, nothing will happen.” The same belief [...]
21Sep2011 | Arthur E. Foulkes | 6 comments | ContinuedThe American Land Question
Widespread landownership long supported a kind of liberal-republican independence. Perhaps we should reexamine the nexus and ask ourselves how, in Donald Davidson’s words, we “let the freehold pass,” and whether that was really for the best.
10Jun2009 | Joseph R. Stromberg | 6 comments | ContinuedAlbert Jay Nock and Alternative History
Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945) was a leading ideologist of the Old Right, a loose collection of individualist intellectuals, journalists, and a few politicians who opposed the growth of government in the first half of the twentieth century. Nock’s writing appeared in the Nation, the original Freeman (1920–1924), which he founded with Francis Neilson, the American [...]
1Nov2008 | Joseph R. Stromberg | 2 comments | ContinuedThe Freeman: An Eyewitness View
The Freeman has a long and distinguished history
in the cause of liberty.
Nock Revisited
Some books and essays require regular re-reading. In the course of our busy lives, we can allow their subtle wisdom to fade into the landscape and lose their initial effect. A work of this kind is easy to spot: it is fresh and sparkling on every subsequent reading; each encounter with it feels like the [...]
1Jun2004 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedNock on Education
The self-proclaimed “philosophical anarchist” Albert Jay Nock thought he was so superfluous to the society around him that he titled his 1943 autobiography Memoirs of a Superfluous Man. He felt utterly out of step with the twentieth century. Born in 1870, he witnessed the severe societal changes resulting from world wars, revolutions in ideology, and [...]
1Jan2000 | Wendy McElroy | 2 comments | ContinuedThe Culture of Classical Liberalism
Tadd Wilson is a freelance writer in Fairfax, Virginia. Despite what is taught in most universities, the essentially classical liberal ideas of free-market economics and limited government have won the basic test of any doctrine: does it beat the best alternative? The evidence is clear, whether in the collapse of the former Soviet Union’s planned [...]
1Dec1998 | Tadd Wilson | 6 comments | ContinuedLeonard E. Read: A Portrait
The Reverend Mr. Opitz, a contributing editor of The Freeman, was a senior staff member of the Foundation for Economic Education until his retirement in 1992. He was book review editor of The Freeman for many years. Leonard started out as a farm boy in the small town of Hubbardston, Michigan. There are always chores [...]
1Sep1998 | Edmund A. Opitz | 4 comments | ContinuedDefining State and Society
Two of the most important concepts in any discussion of liberty are state and society. But it is often far from clear what any given person means by those terms. Part of the confusion stems from the fact that the definitions can shift dramatically depending upon the theoretical approach of the speaker. Virtually all individualists [...]
1Apr1998 | Wendy McElroy | 0 comments | ContinuedWho Said What About Liberty? (a quiz)
The literature of liberty offers double pleasure. You can often enjoy both dynamic ideas and great eloquence. Just for fun, see if you can match the following unforgettable quotations with their authors. The quotations are representative views of many of the greatest thinkers in the history of liberty: A. Lord Acton B. Benjamin Franklin C. [...]
1Jul1997 | FEE Admin | 1 comment | ContinuedThe Disadvantages of Being Educated edited by Robert M. Thornton
Hallberg Publishing Corp., Tampa, Florida 33623 • 1996 • 221 pages • $14.95 paperback The Reverend Mr. Opitz served on the senior staff of The Foundation for Economic Education for 37 years. Now retired, he continues to serve FEE as a Trustee, and as a contributing editor of The Freeman. The Disadvantages of Being Educated [...]
1Jul1997 | Edmund A. Opitz | 0 comments | ContinuedAlbert Jay Nock: A Gifted Pen for Radical Individualism
American individualism had virtually died out by the time Mark Twain was buried in 1910. Progressive intellectuals promoted collectivism. Progressive jurists like Oliver Wendell Holmes hammered constitutional restraints as an inconvenient obstacle to expanding government power, supposedly the cure for every social problem.
1Mar1997 | Jim Powell | 1 comment | ContinuedIsaiah’s Job
Isaiah’s Job is extracted from Chapter 13 of Nock’s book Free Speech and Plain Language, copyright 1937 by Albert Jay Nock, published by William Morrow & Company, New York. This extract has been reprinted with permission. One evening last autumn, I sat long hours with a European acquaintance while he expounded a politico-economic doctrine which [...]
1Mar1997 | Albert Jay Nock | 29 comments | ContinuedAs Frank Chodorov Sees It
John Stuart Mill, says Professor Russell Kirk in a recent article in the conservative National Review, is “dated.” He was referring to the famous treatise On Liberty. The occasion for this dictum is the revival of interest in the treatise, by way of a couple of re-publications and the consequent appearance of critical articles. When [...]
1Apr1956 | Frank Chodorov | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Humanitarian with the Guillotine
Reprinted from The God of the Machine by Isabel Paterson, published in 1943. Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends. [...]
1Sep1955 | Isabel Paterson | 2 comments | Continued-
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