Tales of a Bleeding-Heart Libertarian
This entry was posted on 2/15/2007 9:07 PM and is filed under uncategorized.
Growing up my dad would repeat the cliché, "If you aren't a liberal [socialist] when you're young you've got no heart." He didn't finish the quote because he's still a socialist and I'm not sure if he considers himself old either 
. In any case, as a libertarian I've been called selfish and heartless, and as a bleeding-heart libertarian, I'd like to set the record straight.
What if I like giving to charity, but I have a problem with the fact that the government "charity" is inefficient, wasteful and doesn't help those I'd like to help? What if I prefer to choose the charities I support? I select my charities carefully - I don't throw my money at every pizza-selling fund raiser who shows up at my door and every email I get from Nigeria. The charities I give to are all held to strict reporting standards and brag about the small percentage of their budgets that are used for administrative purposes. When corruption is found in a private charity, they are smeared all over the press. People then take their money elsewhere until they get their act together or the charity folds. That's accountability for you.
The government doesn't have anything close to that kind of accountability. By force, I as a taxpayer must give to their bloated, wasteful charity. Never mind that I have no interest in supporting half the things on their special-interest payroll; I have no choice. What results is waste in bureaucracy and a drain on our economy.
I know what some detractors are thinking because I've heard it so many times before: Sure, the government's a lousy charity, but if the money wasn't confiscated charitable giving would dry up.
That assessment is historically unsupported. In fact, it has been in periods of the greatest economic freedom (and least government intervention) that countries not only improved everyone's lot as a whole, but charities thrived. The biggest charities in this country were all started before the New Deal in the 1930s. They saw a need and they met it out of the goodness of their hearts. How's that for a concept?
Is it too much to ask to want more bang for my buck and for the freedom to choose where my charitable dollars go? Personally, I'd like to give more money to International Justice Mission to help rescue kids from sexual slavery. I don't want to pay for free government condoms. Call me a Nazi, but don't worry; I won't begrudge any charitable condom-fairies out there the freedom to spread the world with condoms. Just don't take my money to do it.
What I find irritating is politicians taking my money, pretending it's theirs and buying votes with it. No one spends another person's money more responsibly than one would spend one's own. Ever. Certainly not a stranger's. Politicians play on our greed and/or pull our heartstrings and bit-by-bit, whittle away our wages by promising little favors to whichever group or groups they think will get them reelected. In the end, these groups get table scraps while the bureaucrats sit down to the feast.
So recently I asked my dad if he was concerned over this broken system we call Social Security, since soon (when the flood of baby boomers begin retirement around 2012), there will only be two workers to support each retiree. "Nope," said the liberal, big-hearted multi-millionaire, "They'll just raise your taxes to 80% to cover it." And I'm the one who's heartless?
Blucie.com 
