Was Albert Jay Nock correct in saying that the educated man is a superfluous man in modern society? One of the greatest intellectual pleasures of my summer has been the discovery of the writings of Albert Jay Nock. Well, really, the re-discovery. I had twice read Nock’s Our Enemy, the State, but I’d never found [...]
Some sound instinct kept Albert Jay Nock from ever becoming a reformer, in the usual sense. He was never a tub-thumper for some system; never an organization man. He was, to the contrary, a lifelong learner. Albert Jay Nock died too soon, but not before he had nailed to the mast several of the paradoxes [...]
The trouble with our civilization, Albert Jay Nock declared, is that it makes exceedingly limited demands on the human spirit and the qualities that are distinctly and properly humane. We have been trying to live by mechanics alone, the mechanics of pedagogy, politics, industry, commerce. Instead of experiencing a change of heart, we bend our [...]
Albert Jay Nock believed that the Jeffersonian project depended on the improvability of citizens through education, but that the ordinary mass of humans simply could not be so improved. In Zen Buddhism, the lineage of student to master is extremely important—it is the channel through which the Dharma is transmitted. There is a story of [...]
Albert Jay Nock was one of the more eccentric grand old men of the nascent American conservative movement in the twentieth century. His opposition to corruption and malfeasance in the public realm was admirable; his tone of crankiness was, is, and will remain a matter of the reader’s individual taste. Episcopal priest, professional baseball player, [...]
Albert Jay Nock, an excellent but largely forgotten writer, once wrote a little book titled Our Enemy, the State. I still reread it when I’m groggy from absorption in the daily events of politics. It revives me like a slap in the face. If I were a pagan, I might fancy I heard the Olympian laughter [...]