Long, long ago, I was in the LP. I think what really woke me up was actually reading Ayn Rand, and....LOL - [1]. I was also doing lots of other reading of nonfiction at the time, thank goodness and her clunky sci-fi novel was just gawdawful in every single way. Also: growing up helped a lot, too.

I think around the same time, I was looking around at others I could see in the party and realized they seemed to be comprised, yeah, of mostly white males, but also: doomsday preppers, gold bugs, conspiracy theorists (and not the fun Robert Anton Wilson kind), thinly-veiled racists, Republicans that were miffed about some minor infraction they perceived in the Republican Party, and so on...and so I was done.

[1] Yeah, yeah I know all too much about the hair-splitting between Objectivists and LIbertarians. Also, when it comes to what many consider a formative text for their weird philosophy, that old quote is so very true:

"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."