In matters of law and public policy, I am often of two minds: there’s the Jeffersonian anarchist-at-heart in me, who bristles at state intervention and the least abridgment of personal liberties; but there’s the equally unshakable unruffled idealist, the sometimes borderline-paternalist, the true believer in the power of government to uphold justice and uplift the down-trodden.  I simultaneously hold two competing visions of America, and I am sentimental about both of them, even when I must acknowledge their mutual antagonism.

So there’s something deeply seductive to me in this vision of “libertarian paternalism”: decisions are made within non-neutral contexts, so exert the power of the state to frame the contexts in favor of socially favorable decisions without prohibiting the socially unfavorable ones.