“I believe in individualism ... up to the point where the individualist starts to operate at the expense of society.”

—Theodore Roosevelt

Pick up any newspaper in the United States today, and one can find evidence of the constant conflicts that result from the tension between the rights of the individual and the needs and desires of the common good.

Protecting individual rights is the cornerstone of the founding principle of the United States. The Declaration of Independence proclaims that all men are created equal, and the Constitution’s Bill of Rights enumerates the most important of the citizenry’s individual rights. Yet the state must, and does, curb individual rights on a daily basis, through laws and the courts. How much the state should curb individual rights, and in what areas the state should get involved, however, is a never-ending, constantly shifting debate...