Nuestro Enemigo El Estado

Author Bio: Albert Jay Nock

Albert Jay Nock was born on October 13, 1870, on a far simpler day than that on which he died: August 14, 1945, at the end of the greatest holocaust ever perpetrated on mankind by man and the State. The young Nock studied the Classics, entered the Episcopalian priesthood, married and had two sons. But at the age of forty he left the active ministry, moved to New York, and began a career as a writer and editor. Steeping himself in the Classical Liberal tradition of Jefferson, Thoreau, Artemus Ward, and Hebert Spencer, he soon found work as a magazine editor and then founded his own publication, The Freeman. Over the next twenty-five years Nock contributed to numerous publications, published over a dozen books, and counted among his friends the likes of H. L. Mencken and Frank Chodorov. A “Tory anarchist” out of step with the times, deeply disillusioned with a government that lead the country into war, depression, and again war, all the while aggrandizing ever more power to itself, Nock died deeply pessimistic about the survival of liberty. He hoped that the flame would be kept alive by a “Libertarian Remnant,” a remnant Our Enemy, the State has helped to foster.