This poll a good example of what often passes for conservatism in this country.

It has such an impoverished understanding of liberty that it can't conceive of anything between "I do what I want" and communism.

Edmund Burke, often considered the founder of conservatism as a political philosophy, had this to say:

"Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites."

Guess he should have subscribed to Prager U.

The truth is that neither of the duopoly parties in this country have a remotely adequate understanding of how our individual rights should be balanced with responsibilities to serve the common good.

A lot of our problems as a nation are expressed by this graph.

Republicans routinely elevate the abstract right to property over concern for the well-being of our neighbors.

Democrats routinely elevate the abstract right to personal autonomy over social cohesion and even over respect for life itself.