Free Republic

I was reading about how Phyllis Shlafly has attended every Republican Convention since 1952. In 1952, the conservative candidate was Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio, who was a bitter opponent of FDR's big government policies. Shlafly supported him. The establishment candidate was Gen. Eisenhower. But who was the first prominent American conservative activist? My vote would be for Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945), who led a national intellectual movement opposed to Woodrow Wilson's big government policies. He also opposed World War One. Before Wilson came into office in 1913, America did not have an income tax. It was, therefore, not necessary...

ISAIAH'S JOB by Albert J. Nock One evening last autumn, I sat long hours with a European acquaintance while he expounded a politico-economic doctrine which seemed sound as a nut and in which I could find no defect. At the end, he said with great earnestness: ``I have a mission to the masses. I feel that I am called to get the ear of the people. I shall devote the rest of my life to spreading my doctrine far and wide among the populace. What do you think?'' An embarrassing question in any case, and doubly so under the circumstances,...