I appreciate your very specific and refreshing answer, AT.
Gosh, at 17 (Pre-internet) I was lucky to have Ayn Rand and Robert Ringer on my parents bookshelf to devour.
In a recent podcast Lew Rockwell brings up a suspicion that Murray Rothbard shared with him: That Libertarians
may be born, not made. Without having to put Agorism in context (Especially here) your path brings
that notion to mind. However, your work in absorbing the authors you cite is laudable and inspiring.
Terence
Haha that actually makes sense, thought that might be because of what I know about the Myers-Briggs-Jung Personality type theory. I don't know if you're familiar with it or not, but for the benefit of those who are reading this post that aren't I'll summarize it. Basically their are 4 temperaments with each temperament having 4 personality types. for 16 personality types total. David Keirsey referred to these four temperaments as the Rationals, the Idealists, the Artisians, and the Guardians. As the Myers-Briggs-Jung typology test groups people into the temperaments described by an acronym that represents 4 dichotomies. Those are Extroverted vs. Introverted (E vs. I) Sensing vs. Intuitive (S vs. N) Thinking vs. Feeling. (T vs. F) and Perceiving vs. Judging (P vs. J) I'm not going to go into the details on the differences between each dichotomy all I"m going to say is that two dichotomies combined make the temperament...when you add in the other two that represent the other person's personality then you have their personality type. There are , again the Rationals, or _NT_ the Guardians, or _S_J the Artisians, or _S_P and the Idealists or _NF_ I myself am an INTJ or as David Keirsey called my kind the "Rational Masterminds" Now you may be wondering why this is important...it's quite simple you see Rationals, are the most independent of all of the temperaments with INTJ's and INTP's being the most independent of the Rationals. The Guardians on the other hand, are the least independent, they are your stereotypical conservatives, they are
very traditional, to the point of it being, in my opinion, a fault, and they are very submissive to authority. The Artisans and Idealists are in between the Rationals and Guardians in Independence. My point, with this is that a great deal of psychologists who specialize in the Myers-Briggs-Jung typology lean toward the "Nature" side of things in the Nature vs. Nurture debate at least in regards to temperaments. In other words they believe that it is something you are born with. Thus it is quite possible that some people are born libertarians though there are going to be those who aren't and are still libertarians despite not being born that way.
