Should President-elect Barack Obama bail out the banks? What about the car companies? Should he institute new regulatory bodies to oversee key industries and prevent future bankruptcies? Should he stimulate the economy by increasing spending or cutting taxes?

The American people are an odd blend of public and private. We founded our country as a union of otherwise sovereign states after violently overthrowing a central authority. We cherish independence, but also demand community involvement.

When it comes to the financial crisis, many take it as a given that the government, not the individuals, should decide what to do, but when it comes to who should marry who, many take it as equally given that it is up to the individuals, not the government.

The epitome of this duality fittingly appears on the first penny these United States ever produced. A few years shy of passing the Constitution, the Continental Congress approved a universal design for a copper cent. Counterfeit coppers were common and inhibited trade. On one side of the penny, designed by Benjamin Franklin, were the words "We Are One," thirteen linked circles representing the colonies and the words "United States." On the other side was the Latin term "Fugio," meaning "I fly," and the motto, "Mind Your Business."

We have been flipping that same coin ever since. Are we the radical anarchists that believe in every man for himself? Yes. Are we also the radical socialists that believe in sharing the wealth? Also yes. How can we reconcile those two aspects?

On a local radio show a few weeks ago, I casually mentioned that Obama was a socialist. What an uproar that caused. "How can you say that? Why do we need labels? Let's wait until he's in office before we criticize him!"

The good news is that socialism still sounds bad to us — we don't want to think of ourselves as socialists. The bad news is that we don't know what socialism means. We think it always means more centralized control than what we currently have, no matter what we currently have.

A socialist government is one that owns or manages parts of the economy. That's it. A government-run post office is socialist. A government-run train service is socialist. A government bailout of banks is socialist. And so on.

What about redistribution of wealth? That's the hallmark way government manages the economy — it punishes success in economic areas it wants to contract (such as Obama's pledge to impose windfall profits on oil companies) and encourages more activity in economic areas it wants to expand (such as "green" ones). It takes money (from those who still have any) and shuffles it around, some from the rich to the poor, some from the poor to the rich, and some from the poor to the poor or the rich to the rich. This shuffling is naked socialism, a centralized control of the fruits of economic labor. That is socialism and that is Obama in a nutshell. He is on the "We Are One" side of the Franklin penny. He will mind your business for you.

But, you might ask, isn't that better than the alternative? Surely we don't want anarchy where the less powerful are oppressed by the more?

There is a remarkable third way, one that defines America, reconciles both sides of the coin and sheds light on the coin itself and the proper role of government. The answer is libertarianism. It hasn't always been called that, but it's always meant individual freedom and responsibility. Libertarians do not believe in anarchy; there ought to be laws protecting property, life and liberty. Neither do libertarians believe in socialism; there ought not be laws regulating, managing or owning "your business."

Only a libertarian government could mint such a thing as the "Fugio" penny. Under anarchy, there would be no centralized currency, but a variety of metals. Under socialism, the currency would not be backed by copper, but rather by fiat (a technical term meaning "nothing"). It would just be backed by the community promise to pay it later.

One of the powers granted to Congress by the Constitution is to mint coins and regulate how much actual metal there is in each, so that there is a standard — essentially, a gold standard. If we had been faithful to the gold standard and banks were not regulated by the government to lend out your demand deposits for decades at a time, we would never have had the current crisis. If we were libertarians, we wouldn't let trillions of dollars be taken from us by force from the most socialist government ever to occupy this free land.