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.

Young people today are being robbed. Of their rights. Of their freedom. Of their dignity. Of their futures. The culprits? My generation and our predecessors, who either created or failed to stop the world straddling engine of theft, degradation, manipulation, and social control we call the welfare state.

Obligations may be universal or particular.

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.

[L]et me point out that libertarians defend a tradition of liberty that is the fruit of thousands of years of human history.

Indeed, the federal government allocates about $185 billion in programs and services based on population figures provided by the Census Bureau.

The issue of the common good is related to the beliefs of communitarians regarding the personality or the separate existence of groups.

It's possible that the law would be innocuous and merely say that no legislation may violate Islam. The big problem is, who gets to determine that? Religious courts? Whose?

Rather, classical liberals and libertarians argue that the system of justice should abstract from the concrete characteristics of individuals.

I've been a fan of Stephen Hunter, film critic at the Washington Post, for some time. I've always found his reviews to be helpful guides to films.