IT ALL BEGAN WITH AYN RAND, as it proverbially does. I was in eleventh-grade journalism class with Matt Mayers, my friend since the age of six. The course was the most notoriously undemanding in Granada Hills High School, leaving ample time for free reading. While I devoured Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra—and got through The Brothers Karamazov and Faust with less youthful exuberance—Matt read Atlas Shrugged. One day he turned around in his chair and told me, “Read this part.

WHEN I LOOK BACK INTO my history to find the reasons I fell in love with liberty, I have to start with my blood heritage and upbringing. My teenage sons have had ample time to mess up their lives, but they already are finding their roads, to liberty, and for good and bad, I see how their parent’s heritage is affecting them. Looking back, I see that my ancestors also influenced my views.

MY BACKGROUND IS IN formal philosophy. My Ph.D. is from UCLA which, in those days—1960s–1970s—was the top logic department in the world. In fact, I was Rudolf Carnap’s assistant during the last years of his life (the logical positivist of all time).

I HEARD, ALMOST BY ACCIDENT, of Murray Rothbard’s Ethics of Liberty, back in 1993. I borrowed it from a political philosophy professor, who—perhaps influenced by a few discussions we had concerning the Austrians I had barely heard of—happened to bring a French translation of this book from abroad. Suddenly I found myself to be a self-aware, full-blown libertarian.

I DISCOVERED LIBERTY AS POLITICAL philosophy (as opposed to libertarianism as a movement) during the first Jim Buckley for Senate campaign in 1968. Buckley was the candidate of New York’s Conservative Party. At the time I was actually the Chairman of the Teen Age Democrats in Columbia County, New York. Buckley was interesting because a central part of his campaign was to end the draft, and at the time the only candidates endorsing such an idea were left-wingers.

I WAS EITHER BORN A libertarian or became one because of my mother’s emphasis on honesty and respect for others’ property. The first political thought I remember was hearing that “your right to swing your arm ends at the tip of my nose.” This was in the 6th grade, and it sounded right to me! The other comment I heard was from our 6th grade teacher who quoted Nathan Hale’s famous, “My country right or wrong, but my country.” That struck me as misguided; loyalty to one’s country does not trump right and wrong!

WHEN I WAS VERY YOUNG, about ten, I fell in love with the game of chess, largely through watching the Fischer-Spassky match on television. My interest in intellectual pursuits dates from that time. Plus, I had learned to read early, at about the age of three, from my grandmother. I always loved reading, and could always read very quickly. I was always what we today call a nerd, born and raised in New Jersey.

REMINISCING ON HOW I BECAME a liberal, I am immediately taken back to the days when I was a student at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Being a mother of three whose children had gone away to college and a husband away most of the time on business trips, I chose to keep my days busy by taking continuing education courses in economics.

TYPICALLY, WHEN I SAY I’M a praxeological austro-paleolibertarian, Rothbardian anarchocapitalist extremist, Hoppean propertarian, and politically incorrect canonist, people say “Huh?”

I WAS ALWAYS AN INDIVIDUALIST, probably because I spent my childhood and adolescent years playing competitive sports. I grew up in a small town in Western Pennsylvania where all the local governments were run by small-time versions of the Soprano family.