It occurs to me that certain motifs continuously recur with respect to liberals' view of public policy. These represent distorted, impractical, or ignorant ideas about how the world operates and what is conducive to good policy.

Prescriptive vs. Proscriptive rights:

The Soviet Union used to emphasize so-called "economic" rights for individuals as opposed to "political" rights. That's misleading, though, because the real dichotomy isn't so much the area of concern which the rights cover, but, rather, whether or not they call for action (prescriptive) or restraint (proscriptive). This distinction is important because, while a proscriptive right may impinge on someone other than the person immediately in question (an example would be delay in catching someone "known" to be a crook because all of the proper warrants must be obtained), a prescriptive right pretty much always impinges upon others.

Operating on the Margins:

Liberals have problems with costs in general and one way in particular that this manifests is with respect to marginal cost. Marginal cost emphasizes the price of acquiring the very next occurrence rather than the whole...

Opportunity costs: