Clarence Thomas' Favorite Anarchist: the radical anti-statism of Lysander Spooner.

• Author: Root, Damon W.
• Position: "Lysander Spooner: American Anarchist" - Book review

Clarence Thomas' Favorite Anarchist: The radical anti-statism of Lysander Spooner.

Lysander Spooner: American Anarchist, by Steve y. Shone, Lexington Books, 138 pages, $55

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IN HIS CONCURRING opinion in the landmark gun rights case McDonald v. Chicago, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas offered a sweeping account of how the anti-slavery movement laid the foundations for the 14th Amendment, which declares, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." As Thomas explained, the authors and ratifiers of the 14th Amendment wanted the recently freed slaves to enjoy all of the rights they had long been denied, including the rights protected by the Second Amendment. The evidence he cited included the writings of the Massachusetts abolitionist Lysander Spooner (1808-1887), who argued that among its many crimes, slavery violated the "natural right of all men 'to keep and bear arms' for their personal defence."

It was a rare high-profile acknowledgment of Spooner. Although mostly forgotten today, he was a key figure in the abolitionist movement and one of the most innovative legal and political thinkers of the 19th century. At a time when abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison denounced the Constitution as a pro-slavery "covenant with death and an agreement with hell," Spooner responded with a powerful book rifled The Unconstitutionality of Slavery (1845), making him a hero to the anti-slavery Liberty Party and a major influence on the abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass. A champion of property rights and free trade, Spooner also argued that banking should be completely unregulated and that intellectual property could be held "in perpetuity." An individualist anarchist and tireless foe of government overreach, Spooner published a brilliant defense of jury nullification, argued that victimless crime laws should be taken off the books, and eventually held that the Constitution itself "has no authority" over anyone.

"At first glance," Winona State University political scientist Steve J. Shone writes in his short and illuminating new book Lysander Spooner: American Anarchist, "Spooner looks to be inconsistent, to agree with thinkers of both the left and right, or even to defy categorization." Yet as Shone argues, that's because Spooner exemplified a uniquely American form of anti-statism, one that saw the free market as a check on the power of big business and considered government to be an unnecessary evil. Using today's political labels, Shone calls Spooner "partly a leftist, and partly a libertarian."

Born in Athol, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1808, Spooner launched the first of his many campaigns against the government in 1835, when, in open violation of Massachusetts law, he set up shop as a lawyer without first completing the five-year apprenticeship required...