Obligations may be universal or particular.

If an individual is born with the obligation to obey, who is born with the right to command?

Guardians are necessary for children and abnormal adults, because they cannot make responsible choices for themselves.

To repeat, communitarians maintain that we are constituted as persons by our particular obligations, and therefore those obligations cannot be a matter of choice.

Libertarians recognize the inevitable pluralism of the modern world and for that reason assert that individual liberty is at least part of the common good.

Libertarians typically argue that particular obligations, at least under normal circumstances, must be created by consent; they cannot be unilaterally imposed by others.

Group personification obscures, rather than illuminates, important political questions.