Monday, February 27, 2017

Libertarian author Jerome Tuccille dead at 79

Jerome Tuccille, Libertarian Author and Trump Biographer, Dies at 79 - The New York Times - William Grimes:

February 24, 2017 - "Jerome Tuccille, who wrote one of the first manifestoes of the American libertarian movement and the first biography of Donald J. Trump, died on Feb. 16 at his home in Severna Park, Md. He was 79.

"As Mr. Tuccille (pronounced too-CHILLY) told the tale in It Usually Begins With Ayn Rand: A Libertarian Odyssey (1971), he was a disaffected Roman Catholic looking for a new faith when he discovered the writings of Ayn Rand and her radically individualist philosophy, which she called objectivism....

"In Radical Libertarianism: A Right Wing Alternative (1970), he laid out a political program that envisioned an end to conscription, taxes and government control over education, health services, transportation and other areas. It also called for the legalization of drugs, prostitution and pornography.

"In an Op-Ed for The New York Times in 1971, Mr. Tuccille called on conservatives 'who still care about such things as peace and justice and racial harmony' to vote for candidates 'who really mean peace when they say peace; who understand and intend to promote the politics of decentralization, of pollution control, of economic and judicial reform, and so on all the way down the line'....

In 1974, two years after the founding of the Free Libertarian Party, Mr. Tuccille ran for governor of New York.... Three years later, in an article for the conservative magazine National Review, he wrote the epitaph for libertarianism as a political movement. Although still committed to its ideals, he called it 'hopelessly utopian' and 'an intellectual exercise, not a serious political alternative'....

"Tuccille wrote how-to books on investing and a series of biographies, beginning in 1985 with Trump: The Saga of America’s Most Powerful Real Estate Baron.... After his Trump biography, he wrote Rupert Murdoch (1989), Barry Diller: The Life and Times of a Media Mogul (1998) and Alan Shrugged: Alan Greenspan, the World’s Most Powerful Banker (2002)....

"Tuccille remained what his son called 'a borderline anarchist. In The Gospel According to Ayn Rand (2007), ...  Tuccille wrote: 'The battle to sustain the Bill of Rights is more challenging now than ever, the fight for freedom is far from over. In many ways things have gotten worse over the decades. Government is grotesquely big, taxes are too high, civil liberties are getting crimped a bit tighter every day.'”

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/books/jerome-tuccille-dead.html
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