Individualism is at once an ethical-psychological concept and an ethical-political concept. As an ethical-psychological concept, individualism holds that a human being should think and judge independently, respecting nothing more than the sovereignty of his or her own mind. As an ethical-political concept, individualism upholds the supremacy of individual rights, the principle that a [...]

When I first heard the term “libertarianism” in the early 1950s, I mentioned it to Ayn Rand as a possible name for our political philosophy. She was suspicious of the term and inclined to dismiss it as a neologism. “It’s a mouthful,” she remarked. “And it sounds too much like a made-up word.” I [...]