Jul 7
85227516
From the comments section:
“First, Browne is wrong about the Founders’ intent—read my July 4 entry to cover that. Second, he demonstrates the truly intellectually bankrupt nature of libertarianism by totally missing the point of the pledge, which isn’t a pledge to the government, but a pledge to the nation as a whole. The nation is what we make it, and I’m pretty happy with it worts and all. Yeah, the government could be smaller, but do I want to strip it down to libertarian nakedness? I don’t think so, and I don’t think the Founders would either. I think they would applaud a government of the United States that had grown wealthy enough to provide universal education, and though they were averse to standing armies, I think they would applaud a nation industrious enough to build an army of such disciplined training and high-tech weapons that civilian casualties are relatively rare, and that the military, because of its commitment to the very ideals they enshrined is not a threat to domestic tranquility, as they feared, but a positive protection of the civilian government, both protecting it and serving it. I could go on, but I think you get my drift.
This paragraph has a lot to chew on, and a lot to tear apart. GNW is a great well written site, but this is well written tosh. I have been contemplating replying to this all day. It is difficult, since the time I tried to counter this sort of tripe, it resulted in Statism Sucks!. The bloated centralised megalith that is the US government is nothing like envisioned by the Founding Fathers. I am willing to bet they would be appalled that the government runs a virtual monopoly on education and a bad education at that. Never mind the fact the Founding Fathers rebelled against taxes which were significantly lower (percentage-wise) than taxes in the US in 2002.
As far as the cheap shots about liberterianism, it is what one has come to expect from paleo-conservative statists. By “libertarian nakedness” I trust he means the oft-repeated implication that all libertarians are basically anarchists by another name. This tired accusation ignores the fact that it is impossible to have a free society without the sanctity of property rights. They must be defended; however in the current climate, property rights are continually being underminded the government set up to defend them, whether it be criminally high taxes or limiting the right to self-medicate and self-defense.
