A more palatable flavor of libertarian

is Clayton Cramer, at least if I read him right. He makes the very timely point that "one of the great precursors to the American Revolution were popular uprisings against judges that were perceived as enemies of the popular will."

I think that we tend to throw around terms like freedom, liberty, rights, independence and democracy as though they all mean the same thing. Freedom and liberty generally do mean the same thing, although liberty tends to carry connotations of going too far because of such usages as "taking liberties" and "libertine." For political purposes, I consider them interchangeable.

But independent has an important difference. Independent is often interpreted as freedom because it is a precondition to freedom, but they are not the same thing. Independent is the opposite of dependent, which is why I maintain that Americans have sold their liberty by accepting government "entitlements." I don't believe that anyone can ever be completely independent because I believe that we all need a savior, but in political terms we trade our independence for the benefits of living in society. It ill behooves any of us, then, to start demanding rights that weren't part of the deal. I argue that part of the deal was that we don't behave outrageously and offensively toward others who reasonably expect to be able to, say, go downtown without being placed in fear by mentally ill homeless people or pestered by panhandlers, yelled at by protestors, etc.

What brings the courts back into the discussion is the fact that they are not democratic. This was thought expedient in order to assure that judges would be insulated from political pressures, but I'm starting to believe that the founders of this nation made a big mistake by not providing a check on the reach of federa judges.