When someone says they are "Going Gault" always refer to it as "Going to the John" and tell them to lock themselves in there and flush themselves, if they really think it is all that bad. heh

As a person who has for many years, politically self-identified as a libertarian, who is also a strong Objectionist, I must vehemently protest this slanderous mis-association with Ayn Rand. Rand was assuredly, NOT of a libertarian political mindset. She was a deeply repressed hack Hollywood Movie Script Writer, known for her development of the good-looking rugged bodice-ripping alienated individualist, who no matter how hard he tried, could never get laid, genre. Only in L. Ron Hubbard's most effusive wet-dream, could Rand logically be grouped with libertarians politically.

Ayn Rand was a megalomaniac, afflicted with an acute, incurable, dark-brooding paranoia, caused from her fortune of slipping away from the herd waiting patiently in line at Stalin's blood-fist abattoir, and escaping from the Soviet to America, about the same time as the Trotskyite founders of NeoConservatism were heading as mindless collectivists in the opposite direction. She must have suffered brutally, the plague of survivors' guilt over that.

Upon realising she could earn a much larger income pushing a bent, convoluted American Dream, than she'd ever make writing scripts in Hollywood, Rand threw herself into creating a brand-spanking New Code of The West; Objectivism, where the good guy got ground to dust as often as he won, but hey, at least he got planted with his boots on.

Rand herself vehemently disavowed that her Objectivist Philosophy was in any way related to libertarianism. That would be the first clue that any person who claims to be both a follower of Rand, and a Libertarian is in reality, just full of shit.

"Above all, do not join the wrong ideological groups or movements, in order to 'do something.' By 'ideological' (in this context), I mean groups or movements proclaiming some vaguely generalized, undefined (and, usually, contradictory) political goals. (E.g., the Conservative Party, which subordinates reason to faith, and substitutes theocracy for capitalism; or the ‘libertarian’ hippies, who subordinate reason to whims, and substitute anarchism for capitalism.) To join such groups means to reverse the philosophical hierarchy and to sell out fundamental principles for the sake of some superficial political action which is bound to fail. It means that you help the defeat of your ideas and the victory of your enemies."

Ayn Rand, "What Can One Do?", Philosophy: Who Needs It

"For the record, I shall repeat what I have said many times before: I do not join or endorse any political group or movement. More specifically, I disapprove of, disagree with and have no connection with, the latest aberration of some conservatives, the so-called 'hippies of the right,' who attempt to snare the younger or more careless ones of my readers by claiming simultaneously to be followers of my philosophy and advocates of anarchism. Anyone offering such a combination confesses his inability to understand either. Anarchism is the most irrational, anti-intellectual notion ever spun by the concrete-bound, context-dropping, whim-worshiping fringe of the collectivist movement, where it properly belongs."

Ayn Rand, "Brief Summary" - The Objectivist, September 1971

Now the membership of The Libertarian Party does have more than its share of Randroids, at a higher frequency than in the general population. One should not read a simple causal relationship from this correlation though.

About the same time that Ron Paul was able to bushwhack the LP Presidential Candidate (1988), the LP was experiencing a great deal of internal strife. Many LP members did not vote for Paul in 1988, or after long reflection, held their noses and voted for him. I did not vote for him. If I wanted to belong to a compromised political party, I'd still be a member of either the Reps or the Dems. Ron Paul is not even close to possessing a libertarian political world-view. Whenever he is faced with an LP Platform Plank he disagrees with, he starts dancing a jig to a "states' rights" tune. Paul has for over three decades now, pronounced the global financial system was on its death-bed. He even predicted that the Y2K bug would exacerbate the effects from a fiat money system. Once, Paul even factored in the President's Penis in one of his false prophecies of financial Doom-and-Gloom:

The worldwide financial bubble is like nothing ever witnessed before and it is collapsing. The Y2K problem will compound our problems, not to mention the instability of the U.S. presidency.

Congressman Ron Paul, "A Worldwide Financial Crisis", Congressional Daily Records, September 9, 1998, pp H7470-H7472, DOCID:cr09se98-137

Up until the early 90's, the LP Membership was largely comprised of individuals who were sickened by the two-party system, had become exceedingly wearisome of have to choose a lesser evil at the voting booths, and were quite happy to debate/argue about what the Nation's government would ideally be. They cared little about election wins, and were content being able to leave the polling booths without having to drop their trousers bend over and vote for Either/Or in the bipolar polity. Staunch, long-term libertarians trend to carry with them a bias that is a bit counterproductive if the goal is to win electoral races. Any person who seems too passionate about holding political office, or being a perennial candidate, loses libertarian cred for that reason alone, and many believe the individual suffers from personality defects that should disqualify him/her from holding elective office. This even included LP Officers. It was a difficult task to field a full plate of candidates in an election, because no sane libertarian desired to hold political office.

Also in the early 90's, it became obvious, even to the god is my pilot, deaf, dumb and blind Republicans, the RNCC's claim that the GOP played under The Big Three-Ring Circus Tent of Inclusiveness, was a sham, and some of the radical new-right, who now identified themselves as conservatives began to feel disenfranchised from the GOP. They believed they'd been shafted by giving full faith and credit to Ronald Reagan. In reality, neither Reagan nor his handlers were radical new-rightys, they were more aligned with paleocons (I mean, c'mon, Sandra Day O'Connor? What was the Old Gimper thinking?). Many of these persons fled to the LP, and the LP Membership was totally unprepared for their grass-roots strategy of polisticking-to-us. They were well organised, and jacking the LP leadership was child's play for them. These were new-rightys, neo-confederates, and theocons, none were libertarian. They managed to flail alive the warmly embraced,, verbose LP Platform, which had evolved into a detailed work, that put personal liberty first, not the state. The LP Platform is now meaningless toilet paper, unfit for use in a dysentery ward, that has run out of supplies.

The 2008 candidate slate of Bob Barr and Wayne Allyn Root was the last indignity for me. I no longer care to work from within the LP, yet since I helped enable the LP early on in its life, by volunteering for petition drives to assure ballot access, working discussion tables with non-combativeness, plus other small bits and pieces, I am in some way responsible for its being. I am also a person of honour, who will never allow a political party which I helped spawn, gain national prominence as an abomination, I labour towards crippling it, and hope to strike a death blow upon it.

Maybe their are many who claim to be both libertarian and true believers in Ayn Rand. but if so, they are part of the burgeoning non-libertarian wing of the LP.

At last The Fountain Pinhead Shrugged