INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY IS AN OXYMORON:

America's founders certainly believed in individual liberty, but they believed that liberty happens within a shared community. They began the Constitution with the phrase, "We the People." We are all one thing -- a people, a nation, a collective.

That people shares a moral order -- rules that are true for all people in all times and that govern us in our freedom. [...]

Justice Anthony Kennedy didn't invent the shift from community to autonomy, but in 1992 he articulated it more crisply than anyone else: "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."

In this sentence, which became famous as the "mystery of life" passage, there is no sense that individuals are embedded in a social order.

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