Modern Era
Ayn Rand
1905–1982 · Objectivism
No one may initiate force. That is the whole of the state's job.
In their words
“The smallest minority on earth is the individual.”
Rand's novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged dramatized the individual creator against the collective claim, and her essays named the moral case: reason, self-interest and non-initiation of force. She treated altruism as the philosophical root of coercion and the state as justified only for police, courts and defense. Her influence reached far beyond readers who accepted the whole system.
Why it matters for freedom
She insisted a person's life belongs to that person, which is the ethical floor under every claim of liberty.
Who they stood against
collectivists and the moral code that made self-sacrifice a virtue