Not only is this crap desperately dull, it sounds exactly like a law school lecture on police power. If I ever write a paragraph in which 14 out of 19 sentences end in a question mark, someone shoot me, please. Hospers might be a role-model for sophomore forensics on the Hazlitt forum, but he's not in the same league as Ayn Rand, who faced and fought the big questions. When Hospers points at five-cent courtroom conundrums, the distinguished party fixer and former LP candidate deliberately sidesteps the question of "obligation," which is the only political debate that matters.

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Here's the problem in a nutshell. X claims that your freedom is limited by a moral obligation to Y, and that's why we have to hire Z to eat donuts (or teach philosophy, or organize a political party, or reinforce party doctrine with a tax-exempt hammer).

During the past twenty years, libertarians and anarchists matched wits exactly once on this question -- and then Bradford ascended to intellectual papacy, insisting that "voting is no sin" and libertarians are morally obligated to sing the catechism. Like Galileo before her, Wendy McElroy was offered exile incommunicado.

By design and by "weight of money," Libertybecame a bully pulpit to promote pals for public office. Electoral tea leaf reading with surprisingly upbeat conclusions comprise Bradford's editorial definition of news. Nothing illustratrates this better than his apostolic decree of a New Libertarianism, effective immediately, based on a "scientific" poll of the paid-up congregation:

"[W]hen we cite the non-aggression imperative in a discussion of a political issue, a lot of people just shake their heads and walk away thinking we're nuts.... The consequentialist approach brings fewer spectacular conversions, but day in and day out it brings better results: few slammed doors, fewer closed minds, more dialogue, more real progress." (R.W. Bradford, Liberty, Mar 99)

Hey -- what happened to moral obligation? Suddenly, it's uncool to discuss right and wrong. Freedom-fighters have to expound marginal utilitarianism. New Libertarians don't need morality. If Jesse Ventura can win office, anybody can.

True or false? "Four Voters Wield a Lot of Power," according to the Rocky Mountain News(July 11, 1999). The government of a Denver suburb is up for grabs after four disgruntled citizens filed a recall petition. Because voter turnout in 1996 was so low, just three more signatures on the petition will toss Mayor Al Parker out of office. If it's subscribed by a total of 41 voters, the entire city council will have to hand over the keys to the municipal donut locker.

But newspaper headlines are often misleading. If you still need proof that the Libertarian Party is dead, here it is, comrade. There ain't a snowflake's chance in hell that Castle Rock, Colorado, is going to elect a libertarian consequentialist. What spawned the recall petition in Castle Rock was the threat of more "development" (i.e., too many upscale Democrats wishing to build new houses and increase the adolescent consumption of Duke Nukem games).

For lack of a better term, I call this U.S. post-industrial suburban realpolitik "Boulderism." The citizens of Boulder, Colorado put a stop to growth years ago, tripling the price of homes and quadrupling traffic congestion. Students and tenured faculty of Boulder's government institutions (University of Colorado, National Standards Laboratory, and a thousand nonprofits) were delighted with the result. They got a "cost-of-donut" pay adjustment and ceased to worry about crime, since newcomers have to be creditworthy members of the Public Servant ruling class to afford a home there. Boulder boasts a citywide surplus of abstract public sculpture, fifty miles of nicely-groomed "greenways," big empty traffic lanes for bicycles, and street barriers that force Mexican landscaping crews (who commute from another city) to drive 5 mph.

Boulder has the best of everything that government has to offer: garbage recycling, decorative streetlamps, educational excellence for toddlers, paramedics, firemen, police, hospitals, prisons, and courts. Like most overfed bureaucracies, Boulder has a wait problem. Their grand jury investigated the Jon-Benet Ramsay murder for more than year, without indicting anyone, and Boulder police spent $1 million collecting evidence, without arresting anyone. Boulderism is 100% representative of the American Dream, in its full-blown, Politically Correct version. A newspaper columnist recently described Boulder as "utopia" compared to an African village. Boulderism is the political creed of suburbanites who elected Bill and Hillary and Chelsea, the smiling folks next door.

Weighed in the context of the lives and fortunes of the Six Billion, it's obvious to Boulderites (a majority of U.S. voters) that we already live in a free society. The American people owe nothing to the Libertarian Party, and constitutional institutions are too important to tinker with. The common law definition of crime was settled long before Rand or Rothbard started yapping about non-initiation of force, and we don't need Born Again libertarian consequentialists to help us "get" free in the distant future. So say we all, Republican and Democrat and Boy Scout and Soccer Mom, one nation under God.

The bottom line is that suburban Americans are wealthy (and spoiled rotten) beyond hope of redemption. I know from experience. I had to do a repair job at a regional shopping mall, walked the entire length of it four times, and the conclusion was inescapable: Middle America is politically comatose. Four out of ten households nationwide derive their income from federal, state, and local government expenditure. As far as the mainstream electorate is concerned, there aren't any negative consequences of public education or welfare entitlements. They're in favor of eight more years of Clinton prosperity (preferably with gun control) and they are emphatically opposed to anyone rearranging the federal, state or municipal furniture.

Shit, suburban America would go to pieces if NPR went off the air for half an hour during breakfast. In 2015, when our national credit card bill comes due and KMart shoppers suddenly find themselves on the street, rubbing shoulders with the homeless, the Hazlitt synagogue of non-initiation choir boys will probably scream for the nearest Hank Rearden (or Cuffy Meigs) to do something about unemployment. One thing is certain. The free movement of capital ain't gonna be pretty if Yahoo's paper gains suddenly go poof.

That's why libertarian consequentialists are urgently brownnosing Bill Gates for a big tax-deductible donut. Call it poof insurance. It's easier to beg Microsoft for next year's staff budget, than to explain libertarian consequentialism to thousands of skeptical Jeep owners who are neck-deep in consumer debt. Unfortunately, Billionaire Bill sounded pretty damn dumb at a recent Cato feed:

"Thank you for this opportunity to speak in Washington. . . With people like IBM and AOL ganging up in their activities but at the same time we have this trial that's trying to paint our industry as one with the complete lack of competition as though any product we create or anyone else could create would last forever. So it's a time where the free market principles apparently need defending and the people here, particularly Cato, have been great in helping us out with that. We appreciate your support. We didn't know that we'd need it. Now that we know, we'll have an ongoing relationship because the principles that really create wealth are not widely understood. Whether it's free trade or open competition, it's amazing that people don't appreciate those things. That is really the source of great things that are going on here... I don't want Microsoft to become a political company. We are a product company building great products and I definitely think, personally, the company is more involved in supporting groups like Cato that explain to the world why these good things are happening. This is a great period in time because these products are creating a lot of jobs, they're creating a lot of freedom, and the fact that people are sort of missing from where that all springs from is disappointing. By supporting a lot of people in this room, hopefully that message will become a lot clearer over time. At the end of the day, we are not a political company." (Bill Gates, Cato website, Jun 99)

Twenty years ago, when I worked for Lou Milione at Invest-In-America, captains of industry made coherent speeches, believe me. If Bill Gates is the ghost of Christmas Future, then Cato and the rest of our Boulderite prosperity is about ten seconds from an obituary.

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Compared to Al and Tipper, I'm an explosive device in a crate of sawdust -- and so are you, brother. The only difference between me and you is the icy grip of fear and two centuries of obligation. You've had it drilled into you by St. Immanuel and a million community college existentialists. Thou shalt not ever hurt anybody. Don't ask why. Don't risk it. Hide behind religion. Put up a bunch of copies of the Ten Commandments in schools. Your children will feel safe and secure. Nobody dangerous in this Jeep. Obey the law and vote.