A quote from libertarian Jim Henley, via LOOG:
Most libertarians would agree that it’s a messed-up state that:
* Creates a massive crime problem in poor minority neighborhoods with a futile, vicious and every more far-reaching attempt to prevent commerce in popular, highly portable intoxicants that leaves absurd numbers of young men with felony records, making them marginally employable.
* Fails to provide adequate policing for such neighborhoods.
* Fails to provide effective education in such neighborhoods after installing itself as the educator of first resort.
* Uses regulatory power to sharply curtail entry into lines of business from hair-care to ride provision, further limiting the employment options of people in such neighborhoods.
* Has in the past actively fostered the oppression of said minority, up to and including spending state money and time in keeping its members in bondage.
* To make up for all of the above, provides a nominal amount of tax-financed welfare for the afflicted.
But it’s a messed-up libertarianism that looks at that situation and says, “Man, first thing we gotta do is get rid of that welfare!”
I could not agree more.
End the war on (some drugs for some people), hire more cops and crack more heads in rough neighborhoods (re-establishing “Mr. Charlie’s Gang” as the toughest one of all), privatize the school system, crush the regulatory state, and make the state apparatus absolutely race-blind.
THEN cut the welfare system.
(And not to be all partisany, but only the first on that list of things to do first, are things that conservatives are standing in the way of.)
I’d say that, in a good proportion of cases, conservatives are standing in the way of the second thing on your list. It’s certainly that way in Oregon.