Vengeance Libertarianism

[Declan McCullagh]

On Wed, Dec 31, 2003 at 04:38:04AM -0800, John Young wrote:
> What's pleasurable about reading the fiction of ideologues like
> Tim is the smack-down tone of their prejudices. Fake, fake,
> fake.
> 
> Nowhere in Tim's spew is the recognition that the largest
> beneficiaries of government favoritism are corporations and
> wealthy individuals like himself, especially those associated with
> the greeders of the defense industry, rather the national
> security state. No US institution has been uncontaminated
> by the wealth generated by the illusion of US enemies and the
> raping of the economy to simulate battle with such fictional
> threats, at home and abroad.

Perhaps it is more thetorically satisfying? I can't speak for Tim or
his writing process. But nowhere have I ever seen him support corporate
welfare, and in fact the logical flow of his argument made in the post
to which you replied would condemn that as well.

More importantly, your claims are incorrect. Defense is $379 billion
for FY2003, while social security, income security, medicare, health,
education and other social services, community development, housing
credits, and so on total over $1358 billion. That's not counting
"international affairs" (a category I take to include foreign aid),
agriculture, transportation, and other programs of dubious necessity
that total hundreds of billions more.

-Declan

Source:
http://www.bea.gov/bea/ARTICLES/2002/03March/0302FedBudget.pdf