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Isabel Bowler Paterson ( January 22 , 1886 , Manitoulin Island Canada -- 1961 ) was a journalist, author, and a leading literary critic of her day. Along with Rose Wilder Lane and Ayn Rand , who both acknowledged an intellectual debt to Paterson, she is one of the three founding mothers of American Libertarianism . Paterson's best known work, her 1943 book ''The God in the Machine'', a treatise on political philosophy, economics, and history, reached conclusions and espoused beliefs that many Libertarian s credit as a foundation of their philosophy. Her biographer Cox (2004) believes Paterson is the "earliest progenitor of libertarianism as we know it today." Ayn Rand (strictly speaking, not a libertarian) wrote that ''The God of the Machine'' "does for capitalism what '' Das Kapital '' does for the Reds and what the Bible did for Christianity ". LIFE Born Isabel Bowler in rural Ontario , her family emigrated to nearby rural Michigan when she was a child. She became an American citizen in 1928. Paterson's family was quite poor and she had 8 siblings. As a teenager, she worked as a waitress, stenographer, and bookkeeper, working at one point as an assistant to future Canadian Prime Minister R. B. Bennett . This hardscrabble youth probably led Paterson to attach great importance to productive "self-starters". Although very articulate and well-read, even erudite, Paterson's formal education was no more than two years in a rural schoolhouse. Very limited formal schooling was an experience she had in common with Rose Wilder Lane . In 1910, she married K. B. Paterson. The marriage was not happy, and they parted in 1918. She began her journalism career in Washington state, at the '' Inland Herald '', first as secretary to its publisher, then as an editorial writer. She then wrote for several Vancouver papers. In 1913, she published her first books, two western novels. After World War I, she moved to New York , where she worked for the sculptor Gutzon Borglum , who was then producing statuary for the Cathedral Of Saint John The Divine and who would later sculpt the memorial at Mount Rushmore . She wrote for two New York newspapers, the ''World'' and the ''American''. In 1921, Paterson became an assistant to Burton Rascoe , the new literary editor of the '' New York Herald Tribune ''. From 1924 to 1949, she wrote a column (signed "I.M.P.") for that paper's "Books" section. Paterson became one of the most influential literary critics of her place and time. (She was not the only critic of that era with libertarian inclinations; witness H. L. Mencken .) Her column, notorious for its sharp wit and its goring of sacred cows, was where she first articulated many of the ideas that reached their final form in ''The God in the Machine''. These ideas, especially free trade, were also foreshadowed in the historical novels she wrote in the 1920s and 30s. Paterson opposed most of the economic program, known as the New Deal , American president Franklin D. Roosevelt put into effect during the 1930s, and advocated less government involvement in social and Fiscal issues. She also led a group of younger ''Herald Tribune'' employees who shared her views, one of whom was the young Ayn Rand . Paterson and Rand promoted each other's books and conducted an extensive polemical correspondence, touching on religion and philosophy. This correspondence ended with a 1948 quarrel. Rand, an Atheist , was critical of Paterson's attempts to link Capitalism with religion. By a curious coincidence, ''The God in the Machine'' was published in the same year as Rand 's '' The Fountainhead '' and Lane 's ''The Discovery of Freedom''. Just when American individualism seemed dead for good, three women came forward to lead a Classical Liberal and Individualist counterattack on the spirit of the New Deal and wartime collectivism. Albert Jay Nock (quoted in Doherty 2005) noted at the time that Lane's and Paterson's books were "the only intelligible books on the philosophy of individualism that have been written in America this century." The two women had "shown the male world of this period how to think fundamentally... They don't fumble and fiddle around--every shot goes straight to the centre." Paterson influenced the post-WWII rise of articulate American Conservatism through her correspondence with the young Russell Kirk in the 1940s, and with the young William F. Buckley in the 1950s. Buckley and Kirk went on to found the '' National Review ''. In her retirement, Paterson declined to enrol in Social Security . QUOTATION
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