Out here in the west, social services are administered by the county commissioners. At a candidate forum last night, libertarians running for commissioner opposed a .05% (i.e. a penny on a $20 purchase) extension of a sales tax that would go to support battered women, the alcohol recovery facility, mental health, walk-in clinics for the poor, etc. The libertarian argument: "charity" should be voluntary. When the government collects taxes, it will be elected officials not "the people" who decide which "charity" to support.
It’s a truly grotesque argument. Of course elected officials (democratically-elected officials) decide. Its their job; we’ve delegated it to them. We elect officials to to decide how to spend all public revenue. What exactly is the problem?
Moreover, I know of not a single instance in which a complex society such as ours has been able to support the less able and less fortunate with strictly private charity. It hasn’t happened and it’s certainly not going to happen soon.
Is private giving morally superior to public intervention, as the libertarians assert? I don’t know that it is. Most of us express our commitment to the general welfare by paying our share of the burden.
I can only conclude that the libertarians, at least the ones that I heard last night, live in an alternative and wholly theoretical universe. They’re in thrall to a foolish and impractical ideology — one that renders their actions unintentionally hard-hearted and cruel.
And what makes them so damn angry, intolerant and insulting?
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