What makes it possible for individuals so passionate about something so specialized as importing, roasting, and selling coffee to be able to devote their lives to delivering the perfect cup? Such specialization is made possible by the enormous productive output of a relatively free economy and the complex division of labor such an economy supports.

Rights are objective (fact-based) principles, so the Bill of Rights is properly understood to protect man’s objective rights. Only a legal theory based on objective meaning can explain, for example, why laws forbidding blasphemy violated rights two centuries ago and why laws restricting political speech violate rights today.

Rowe is right that “happiness does not come from a job,” in the sense that getting an idealized job will not automatically make you happy. But, in a deeper sense, happiness does come from a job, in that working in a productive career you love is a fundamental source of joy in life. Rowe’s own approach to work demonstrates this.

The fundamental debate is not whether the costs of prohibiting marijuana outweigh the benefits. The fundamental debate is whether consenting adults have a right to decide what to do with their own bodies and property, and whether government has a right to violate individual rights in the name of “public health” (or anything else).

Some things are seemingly so mundane, and we use them so routinely, that we scarcely notice how important they are to our lives. Take, for example, common kitchen supplies. Pause for a moment to consider how businesses developed four essential products—and how important those products are to our daily food preparation.

Those of us who are not doctors, but who love our lives and our health, should not stand idly by as politicians and bureaucrats shackle the doctors on whom our lives and health may well depend. We should stand with those doctors who, like Craviotto, demand liberty to practice medicine in accordance with their own judgment.

Rather than humbly seek God’s guidance through prayer, we should proudly uphold the value of reason as our only means of achieving rational guidance in politics or any other area of life. And we should demand that our political leaders go, not by faith, feelings, or popular opinion, but by rational, rights-respecting principles.

What if, when you looked at a piece of cheese (for example), you saw not only the cheese’s shape, color, texture, and the like, but also its chemical composition? Thanks to portable near-infrared spectroscopes now under development, you may soon be able to scan cheese or virtually any other object to learn facts about its chemical makeup.

The widely publicized racist rant of Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling is a disturbing reminder that some people continue to hold racist sentiments. But the greater and deeper harms to blacks today are to be found not in such racist rants, but in rights-violating government policies.

The solution consistent with individual rights is neither to force students to pledge allegiance to a nation “under God” nor to forbid them to do so. Rather, the solution is to get government out of education altogether and leave private schools to establish their own policies on such matters.

SpaceX has successfully tested a soft landing of its Falcon9 rocket booster. Not only does such technology promise to vastly increase the launching of technologies and supplies into orbit, it promises to play a pivotal role in eventually transporting people to other planets, starting with Mars.

Inequality of resources per se is neither good nor bad. When government protects people’s rights and some people earn more wealth than others do by their own productive effort, the outcome is just. When government (or a criminal) violates people’s rights, the outcome (not to mention the act) is unjust—whether the result is more inequality or less.

As a chapter of the NAACP once concluded, “the ready access to a lifetime of welfare and free social service programs is a major contributory factor to the crime problems we face today.” The same holds for the related problems usually associated with high-crime neighborhoods, including high rates of absentee fathers, rampant drug abuse, gang violence, and the like.

The fundamental problem is that the government is unlawfully maintaining possession of the lands in question and failing to recognize legitimate property rights over those lands. Because the federal government “owns” the wilderness lands in question, in practice no one truly owns them; their control is at the mercy of political factions.

Especially encouraging is that George Will attempts to come to grips with the question of why individuals have rights. As Craig Biddle and Stephen Bourque write in response to an earlier article by Will in which he wrestles with the issue of rights, “rights are recognitions of certain factual requirements of human life and prosperity on earth.”