Rick Sollman

    Like all universities, the Conservative University requires its students to read. The book of choice for this conference was Albert Jay Nock’s, Our Enemy, the State. As their required reading, students discussed this classic during the conference with the assistance of Conservative University faculty. 

    While books like The Communist Manifesto are required across hundreds of college curricula, Accuracy in Academia found only one course that had Our Enemy, the State on its reading list. Conservative University strove to create a balance for what is neglected in academia. Nock’s classic was one of the tools recruited to serve this purpose. 

    Made available once again by Hallberg Publishing, Our Enemy, the State addresses the powers of the State, differentiating it from that of legitimate government. Nock characterized the State as a leach on the social power of a society. He wrote, “All the power [the State] has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn.” 

    While it was not mandated that everyone agree with Nock’s assessment of civil society, students were encouraged to discuss Nock’s work. The discussion sparked one student, Alan Lockard, to write an essay. His criticism dealt with how the problem of the State could be solved, once recognized. Of this he penned, “The forces of totalitarian socialism in this country are powerful and devious, but they cannot publicly oppose the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or its Bill of Rights. If conservatism is to prevail against the threat described by Nock, it must uncompromisingly support and defend the clear language of these great documents at every opportunity.” 

    While students read and analyzed the book individually, Conservative University enlisted the efforts of three faculty members. Professor Paul Gottfried, entertainment figure Reginald Jones, and columnist Joseph Sobran led the program on Our Enemy, the State, lending their insights and leading discussion on the book. 

    Paul Gottfried, a professor of humanities at Elizabethtown College, kicked off the discussion with a speech entitled, “The World of Albert Jay Nock.” He began by reflecting on the amount of influence that Nock had on many prominent mid-century conservatives, including William F. Buckley and Russell Kirk. 

    Professor Gottfried also touched upon Nock’s distinction between the “government” and the “State.” Gottfried said of Nock’s definition of the former, “government is government when it is acting as government should…basically to protect people’s property, their lives, to maintain the peace necessary for a commercial republic, and then backing away and leaving people alone.” 

    In opposition to “the way the government is supposed to work,” Gottfried offered the defining characteristics of Nock’s “State.” Among the actions of the “State” that Gottfried put forward were “reconstructing people, redistributing income, doing things that earlier generations of Americans would have considered tyrannical.” 

    Gottfried described Nock as a critic of fascism, something often equated with conservatism by the Left. Nock did not seem to think so as he wrote, “The superficial distinctions of Fascism, Bolshevism, and Hitlerism are the concern of journalists and publicists; the serious student sees in them only the one root-idea of a complete conversion of social power into State power.” 

    Later, the discussion leaned to more recent issues as Reginald Jones, a pioneer of the rap movement and current campus speaker, gave his speech, “Does Liberty Have Any Friends?” Jones presented the students with a view of how Nock’s writings relate to today’s society.

    Jones first discussed the gun issue and how it related to Nock’s “State.” Jones related this to the NAACP’s lawsuit against gun manufacturers and to his own personal experiences. “If anybody should understand the Second Amendment and why it is there,” said Jones, “it should be black people.... The Second Amendment is not so much defending ourselves from criminals. It’s the criminals in the State that we are trying to protect ourselves from.” 

    Jones related the Second Amendment issue to that of the media’s inaccurate portrayal of the Columbine massacre. “One of the differences between the United States and the Soviet Union was supposed to be that we have a free press and that their press is owned and run by the State,” he mused. “The remarkable thing is that we have a free press, but our press is in effect a PR firm for the power of the State.” 

    Reginald Jones summed up  by emphasizing the importance of freedom from the State in society. “We must be consistent on the issues of liberty,” Jones said. 

    Joseph Sobran, noted columnist and former senior editor of National Review, wrapped up the discussion by relating Nock’s arguments against the State to his own for state sovereignty. Sobran argued that it is the federal bureaucracy that creates the “State,” and most powers should be reserved to the states, or individuals. 

    Sobran gave a chilling account of the State usurping the power of the smaller state governments. He proceeded to say that adhering to the Constitution was the only way to scale back the size of the State and return to a smaller, constitutional government. 

    Sobran lightened the mood later in his address. When asked how our nation’s capital would change if he ran things, Sobran quipped, “It would be a lot easier to drive around D.C. That’s for sure.”