This is one of my favorite essays. This might be good statist => minarchist/anarchist material.
How a Jew Came to God
Excerpt
I tried out my newly acquired theory in the park. The defense of an idea begets conviction of its correctness. Even before I knew the answers I managed to parry questions with plausabilities which, strangely enough, I frequently found corroboration for in the book, to which I had to refer often. The crowd seemed to be much more interested in this poverty-in-the-midst-of-plenty argument than in attacks on the institution of religion, and it might be that this greater interest had some influence on my intellectual switch; even a crusader likes to please a crowd, and, in fact, likes a crowd to please. I gradually gave up on religion and put my reading time to economics and social problems. These were subjects I had paid little attention to at college; now they seemed all-important and I began reading all I could find on them, including, of course, the other books of Henry George. The thread of piety which ran through his works I dismissed for years as so much persiflage. Finally, and reluctantly, it dawned on me that his religious concepts in some way integrated his economics and his social philosophy. His God and his natural law meant something to his scheme of thought and I determined to find out what’ it was, even though, having been scorched by pragmatism as well as agnosticism, I was sure there was nothing to it.