Libertarians recognize the difference between adults and children, as well as differences between normal adults and adults who are insane or mentally hindered or retarded.
Tom G. PalmerWhat libertarians assert is simply that differences among normal adults do not imply different fundamental rights.
Tom G. PalmerLibertarians recognize the inevitable pluralism of the modern world and for that reason assert that individual liberty is at least part of the common good.
Tom G. PalmerAt George Mason University I saw Hoppe present a lecture in which he claimed that Ludwig von Mises had set the intellectual foundation for not only economics, but for ethics, geometry, and optics, as well. This bizarre claim turned a serious scholar and profound thinker into a comical cult figure, a sort of Euro Kim Il Sung.
Tom G. PalmerGroup personification obscures, rather than illuminates, important political questions.
Tom G. Palmer[L]et me point out that libertarians defend a tradition of liberty that is the fruit of thousands of years of human history.
Tom G. PalmerLibertarians typically argue that particular obligations, at least under normal circumstances, must be created by consent; they cannot be unilaterally imposed by others.
Tom G. PalmerThe reason the government sells the census as your ticket to getting goodies - rather than as your civic duty - is that distributing goodies is now all the government does.
Tom G. PalmerThe government has become a mechanism for distributing largess, and your census form is your ticket.
Tom G. PalmerEquality of rights means that some people cannot simply impose obligations on others, for the moral agency and rights of those others would then be violated.
Tom G. PalmerIt is precisely because neither individuals nor small groups can be fully self-sufficient that cooperation is necessary to human survival and flourishing.
Tom G. PalmerGuardians are necessary for children and abnormal adults, because they cannot make responsible choices for themselves.
Tom G. PalmerBut there is no obvious reason for holding that some normal adults are entitled to make choices for other normal adults, as paternalists of both left and right believe.
Tom G. PalmerTo repeat, communitarians maintain that we are constituted as persons by our particular obligations, and therefore those obligations cannot be a matter of choice.
Tom G. PalmerIf an individual is born with the obligation to obey, who is born with the right to command?
Tom G. PalmerLibertarians argue that no normal adult has the right to impose choices on other normal adults, except in abnormal circumstances, such as when one person finds another unconscious and administers medical assistance or calls an ambulance.
Tom G. PalmerThe first census in 1790 asked just six questions: the name of the head of the household, the number of free white males older than 16, the number of free white males younger than 16, the number of free white females, the number of other free persons, and the number of slaves.
Tom G. Palmer