Matt Zeitlin: Impetuous Young Whippersnapper

Amanda Marcotte has some not so nice things to say about libertarians:

Anyway, the whole statement betrays the fundamental issue with libertarianism, which is that it’s not based around a concept of liberty so much as it’s based around the concept that the bodies of the working class are the actual property of the rich. Sending people to die in war while avoiding the service yourself makes perfect sense in this regard; the working class belong to you, and you can dispose of their bodies for your own means if you see fit. Not saying that Megan believes that outright, necessarily, but she clearly from this statement thinks that the use of other human beings lives to advance an imperialist agenda is, on the moral scale, far down the list from asking the worthy rich to pay back to a society that has given them so much while others have so little.

There are many things wrong with libertarianism, but the idea that they see the working classes as their playthings for neo-imperialist adventures is certainly not one of them.  By libertarian, Marcotte seems to mean those conservatives that are pro tax cuts, social spending cuts, talk a good game about how bad the nannie/welfare state is, and also are big Iraq War boosters — kinda like Glenn Reynolds.  Too bad Reynolds isn’t a libertarian.  Surely Will Wilkinson, Brian Doherty, Julian Sanchez and Justin Logan(war opponents all) aren’t cogs in the neoconservative war machine, and they don’t want the “working class” to be their “property” as well.  It’s worth pointing out that it was a libertarian, Milton Friedman, who was the leader in stopping the real conscription of the working classes to fight neoimperialist wars (the Draft).  So it appears as if Marcotte is absurdly slandering an entire political philosophy based on Megan McArdle pointing out that taxes aren’t equivalent to charity.

Marcotte also decides to push my buttons on the marriage and poverty issue:

. This view of social spending infects the government under conservatives—the maudlin concern for the souls of the poor has led BushCo to do things like tie welfare benefits to finger-wagging classes about the importance of marriage, for instance.

While I won’t vouch for the good intentions of the Bush Administration’s social policies, “finger wagging” about marriage isn’t all that objectionable.  We have good data to show that those children who grow up in unmarried households have worse developmental outcomes and that lack of marriage and family breakdown can cement low social and economic status. So, is trying to get the poor to adopt behavioral changes so that they and their children wont’ be impoverished count as “finger wagging.”  I guess, but my concern is with poverty, not whether we should or shouldn’t “finger wag” at the poor.  Apparently, because the Bush administration has launched an awful and destructive war, having a social policy that attempts to encourage poverty fighting behavior that is somehow illegitimate. *Sigh*