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Hacktacular!

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Fresh off his…not entirely convincing defense of libertarianism, Matt Welch tabs uberhack Michael Barone’s argument “that [government] spending is not popular this year.”   The obvious problem with this argument is that public opinion surveys continue to indiciate that all federal government spending of any fiscal consequence ranges from “popular” to “extremely popular.”   So what evidence does Barone have for his claim?

  • A couple members of Congress defeated in primaries, and another one retiring after a 41-year career, were members of the apporpriations committee of their respective house.   Omitted:  evidence that even 1 in 20 voters were aware that these members of Congress were members of an appropriations committee,  let alone that it was a desicive factor in thier voters.
  • A conservertarian winger won…a Republican primary.   In Kentucky.

As evidence that government spending is unpopular among the American electorate, this leaves rather a lot to be desired.   And for the coup de grace, he also praises Eric Cantor’s YouCut gimmick, although the only way it could be made more farcical would be for Glenn Reynolds to design a goofy graphic celebrating the trivial spending cuts Cantor isn’t quite advocating.   Verdict: fiscal libertarianism continues to be extremely unpopular, just like the worthwhile kind.

…since most of the commentary has focused on what I assumed to be an uncontroversial throwaway line at the end, I guess I have to clarify that of course many if not most of the people who call themselves “libertarians” are basically standard-issue Republican hacks. Of course, some libertarians are not Republican hacks and have valuable things to say to people who do not share all of their values, but that’s not the real issue.    The point is that there are areas — criminal procedure, the War on (Some Classes of People Who Use Some) Drugs, executive war powers, etc. — where there are obvious overlaps between left-liberal and libertarian principles.   But, alas, libertarian principles tend to be just as unpopular when they’re salutary as when they’re pernicious.    I’m not sure how pointing this out constitutes an endorsement of a nightwatchman state.

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