When I was a boy I used to talk to my maternal grandfather about politics and world affairs a lot. He was well informed. He was only 42 when I was born, so he was still relatively young while I was a teen-ager. He still rode his horse and roped calves. (He could ride a horse a lot better than he ever learned to drive a car or truck.) He was pretty talkative; not at all the silent type of cowboy. He told a lot of stories, and they were long and drawn out. He didn't drink, smoke, chew, or cuss much. Not the stereotype Texan, but actually fairly typical. But, he was often quiet around people listening and watching, telling an occasional story, but not venturing many opinions. I figured out that he was pretty shrewd at evaluating people; he would tell me what people were thinking and what their agenda was when we were alone. He made it a practice not to say anything bad about anyone, with the exception of Franklin Roosevelt, whom he considered to be a socialist and seriously didn't like. He explained to me that socialism and communism were bound to fail because they didn't take into account human nature. He thought that people would always end up acting in their own self interest. He was telling me about enlightened self-interest as a government concept before I ever heard of Ayn Rand. He was very independent, and mostly wanted the government to leave him alone. In fact, he was pretty much a loner. I guess I'm a lot like him in that respect at least. And also in political philosophy.