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IT USUALLY BEGINS WITH AYN RAND 257
Your view is pure negation.” 24 Rothbard and Hess pulled together a few
left-right conferences in the year following St. Louis, but their Radical
Libertarian Alliance was short-lived. More durable were the many neo-
Objectivist groups that emerged in the fall of 1969. In open revolt against
YAF the UCLA chapter began putting out “some real volatile stuff,” one
California libertarian informed the deposed state director. “It has black
fl ags with dollar signs and quotes from Rand yet.” 25 At the University
of San Diego another student reported that the local YAF leader “has
changed her chapter into an open Objectivist group and has been holding
extensive and intensive study groups in the area and has been sponsoring
speakers on campus.” 26
The largest and most infl uential organization to emerge from the libertarian
secession, the Society for Individual Liberty (SIL), grew out of
Objectivist roots. The group was formed by a merger between YAF’s
Libertarian Caucus and the Society for Rational Individualism, publisher
of The Rational Individualist. One of the organization’s fi rst press
releases, “S.I.L. Asks Release of Imprisoned Radical,” blended fi ction with
reality by objecting to the imprisonment of John Galt. The group rallied
in protest on November 22, the date given in Atlas Shrugged for Galt’s
delivery of his famous sixty-page speech. The small band of libertarians
waving black fl ags with dollar signs in front of the Philadelphia Federal
Courthouse was largely misunderstood, with several passersby accusing
them of Communist sympathies. 27 Even a reading of Galt’s individualist
oath did little to clarify the protest’s intent.
However inscrutable to outsiders, SIL quickly emerged as the central
clearinghouse for the libertarian movement by dint of its free-form
membership structure and the enthusiasm of its founders. Immediately
after its birth SIL claimed 103 chapters, and at its fi rst-year anniversary
boasted thirteen hundred members, three thousand persons in
contact with the organization, and 175,000 pieces of literature distributed.
28 The 1972 directory of SIL was fat with libertarian organizations.
Subdivided into multiple categories, the directory provides a snapshot
of the early libertarian movement: 36 Libertarian Action Organizations
are listed, along with 98 local SIL chapters, 33 institutes, 4 foundations,
29 booksellers, 31 libertarian-friendly publishers, 6 education endeavors,
24 enterprises, and 13 new community projects. The directory also
identifi ed a range of issue groups and political action groups, including
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