Justice & Law Quote by Tom G. Palmer

Palmer’s line is doing a quiet but pointed piece of liberal arithmetic: if rights are genuinely equal, no one gets to draft other people into their moral projects. The sentence sounds abstract, but the target is concrete - the everyday urge to treat other human beings as instruments for a cause, a community, or a “higher good.” By framing the issue as “impose obligations,” he’s not denying that we owe each other anything; he’s challenging who gets to decide what’s owed, and by what authority.

The key phrase is “moral agency.” Palmer is invoking the idea that individuals aren’t just bodies to be managed but choosers whose capacity to decide is itself morally protected. That’s why coercion is described as a violation twice over: it doesn’t merely take freedom; it steals authorship. The subtext is anti-paternalist and anti-collectivist: when someone claims the power to obligate you “for your own good” or “for society,” they’re smuggling in a hierarchy that equality of rights is supposed to rule out.

Contextually, this sits squarely in the classical liberal/libertarian tradition Palmer is known for - a vocabulary shaped by debates over welfare states, compulsory service, speech and association, and the thin line between solidarity and commandeering. The sentence is also rhetorically strategic: it shifts arguments about policy outcomes (who benefits?) into arguments about standing (who is allowed to command?). That move forces the reader to confront an uncomfortable implication: even well-intentioned obligations can become a moral power grab when they’re imposed rather than chosen.