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

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

Equality of rights means that some people cannot simply impose obligations on others, for the moral agency and rights of those others would then be violated.

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

What libertarians assert is simply that differences among normal adults do not imply different fundamental rights.

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.

Libertarians argue that no normal adult has the right to impose choices on other normal adults, except in abnormal circumstances, such as when one person finds another unconscious and administers medical assistance or calls an ambulance.