The great Robert Nisbet was one of America’s leading public intellectuals. As a sociologist and historian he published some of the most brilliant and insightful scholarly works of the 20th Century. Here is his iconic essay, “Cloaking the State’s Dagger,” which appeared in the October 1984 edition of Reason magazine. As a devastating critique of the veiled euphemistic origins and murderous rationale of government throughout the ages, it belongs in the same class as Murray N. Rothbard’s powerful “The Anatomy of the State.”

The Best of Charles Burris