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IT USUALLY BEGINS WITH AYN RAND 259
a rite of passage for most libertarians. Trading jokes about John Galt,
fondly reminiscing over one’s fi rst encounter with Atlas Shrugged, and
employing specialized Rand references such as “second-hander,” “stolen
concept,” and “package deal” created a sense of group cohesion and identity.
This feeling of togetherness and unity was particularly important in
a movement that claimed individualism as its mantra and was phobic
of conformity. As the joke went, “If you put half a dozen libertarians
into a room together, you will eventually end up with four factions,
2 conspiracies, 3 newsletters, 2 splinter groups and 4 withdrawals of sanction!”
33 Or, as the editors of New Libertarian Notes warned, “Everyone in
this publication is in disagreement!” 34 Rand helped libertarians create a
cohesive subculture without sacrifi cing autonomy or independence.
Rand’s emphasis on capitalism also helped libertarians remain distinct
from the New Left. To outsiders, libertarian symmetry with the
counterculture was among the movement’s most salient characteristics,
but careful observers understood that similarities between libertarians
and the left were only skin deep. A writer for the gentleman’s magazine
Swank stumbled across a Greenwich Village coffee house identifi ed
only by a dollar sign on the door, where waiters handed out a petition
endorsing Rand for president. Here he found not beatniks but “buckniks,”
a species of disenchanted youth who “hates everything about our
society . . . but who believes in free enterprise on the individual level and
wants to ‘make good’ in a business sense as deeply as any Horatio Alger
hero.” 35 It was true that Objectivists did have a tendency toward sartorial
experimentation, but their rebellion was always in the service of capitalism.
Some NBI students liked to dress like Rand, sporting dollar-sign
insignia, fl owing capes, and elongated cigarette holders. At the Radical
Libertarian Alliance conference a “Randian superhero” appeared, with a
gold cape, “black stretch suit with an enormous gold dollar sign embroidered
on his chest and a gold lame belt cinching his waist.” 36 There were
even beaded and bearded Randian “heads,” lovers of both LSD and logic.
However long their hair and outlandish their dress, however, few libertarians
were interested in a durable alliance with the New Left.
Indeed, hippie styles only created trouble by luring lefties to the cause
under false pretenses, as libertarian writers noted uneasily. Writing in
Protos Don Franzen identifi ed a key sticking point: “It is not exaggeration
to say that in selling libertarianism to Leftists, many libertarians
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