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.

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.

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 difference between adults and children, as well as differences between normal adults and adults who are insane or mentally hindered or retarded.

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.

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

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.