But 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.

At 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.

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

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

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

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

Obviously, all of us have been influenced by those around us.