This thread is about people who had such a deep insight on human nature that even if they had a different ideology, they ended up helping the cause of ultimate freedom.
The first person I can think of is George Orwell, whose 1984 shows the core nature of the state. That book had a profond impact on my libertarian turn, and to think it was written by a self-proclaimed socialist…
So guys and gals, what other people you can think of?
Aldous Huxley, with Brave New World.
mr1001nights definetly, what a genius!
Adam Smith
Randolph Bourne
Hugo Grotius.
Douglas Rushkoff (specifically for his book “Coercion”)
Ayn Rand
Hideo Kojima (I’ve played his games before & after being a libertarian & remember them being influential, especially MGS2)
Might post more later.
Ultimately, Barack Obama.
Immanuel Kant
Aristotle, and the Spanish Scholastics.
Really? You know, I never really looked that deep into MGS2, but in retrospect, I guess there were a lot of libertarian-esque themes.
The contrast between individualism (Snake) and collectivism (genome soldiers), the refusal to glamorize war or the military, the overt anti-nuke theme, the fact that everyone who has any connection to the state seems to turn out to have been a bad guy all along, the methodological rejection of determinism… yeah, I can see it.
What really spoke to me was it’s theme of memetics & information transmission, which made me question statism without actually every knowing (all under the guise of furthering my own scientific knowledge, of course, so maybe some youthful self-deception was going on, lol). In hindsight, I think this stuck out the most since it revealed a w ay of explaining things that I had previously thought were unsolvable, or mystical (such as ecnomics, or why do people believe what believe, why do wars occur, & other little consequences of the state).
If I hadn’t desired more information, if I was perfectly fine with an incomplete viewpoint of picture, I probably would not be here today typing this. MGS2, oddly enough, was a bit of an intelelctual turning point for me, especially after reading a very detailed explanation of the storyline & it’s themes here:
Metal Gear Solid 2 Ending Analysis
What you point out is also correct. I also think, however, that from the amount of knowledge Kojima has of history, to be able to not only mimic but enact & virtually manifest it via a video game as well, that he might have some libertarian streak to him, as I tend to find the more libertarian I became, the more & more I analyzed history (as well as the more the more I analyzed history & questioned it, the more libertarian or anti-statist I became).
What clued me in early on, however, was not what others would call the “grey morality” of the stories, but the conflict of various moralities & viewpoints of characters themselves.
Snake fully well knows killing doesn’t make him a hero & may not be justified at all, & in MGS1, he openly admits that he’s nothing but a soldier, a dog of war, & eventually towards the end (as well as by MGS2) comes to revoke his previous beliefs & practices of simply being a hired gun for the state (he even ends up making a private organization called Philanthropy with Otacon to conduct private black-ops to expose the government’s stubborn activity in continuing to develop on the Metal Gear weapon).
I could go on & on with examples, but it would de-rail the topic. I’m glad I’m not the only one who sees Kojima as an influence, though 
Marx. As a scratching post.
John Locke
I think his extremely strong anti-coercion stance would make him a libertarian. I’d say that those times that held him of realising libertarianism.