BEDSIDE TABLE
“I read Mr. Jefferson (1926), by the libertarian Albert Jay Nock, when writing my book about progressive Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who, despite differing politics, claimed it was his favorite biography.
Nock’s view of Thomas Jefferson is so relevant to current American debates: His book reveals how many of America’s leaders viewed constitutional history through economic terms. Jefferson embodied an anti-oligarchy tradition that favored farmers over monopolists and financiers; he embraced Republicanism because it employed the smallest unit of governing and was hard to centralize. In the progressive era, all parties shared Jefferson’s hatred of monopoly. But after the civil rights movement, Democrats prioritized racial equality, forgetting working people’s interests.