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.

Obligations may be universal or particular.

It is obvious that different individuals require different things to live good, healthy, and virtuous lives.

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.

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

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.

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