The government has become a mechanism for distributing largess, and your census form is your ticket.

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.

Abstraction is a mental process we use when trying to discern what is essential or relevant to a problem; it does not require a belief in abstract entities.

Most Europeans have no idea how wild life can be in north America.

The 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.

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

The 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.