The Problem With Safety Nets

Let me clarify a little bit for Mr. Larison, who I’d like to see do martial arts just so I could call him Larry-Sahn, but my point was simply that we don’t live in what could reasonably be called a small state—certainly our government is not a “libertarian” one. So what Francis and others who live the libertine lifestyle are doing is taking advantage of the way our society has headed toward the part of libertarianism that prizes freedom of in terms of entertainment and sexual expression but then pads out the consequences of engaging in those behaviors. Moreover, thanks to the size of the state, we’ve become an increasingly secular society, meaning that it has become harder and harder to attach stigma to such behaviors. Big government made him do it? No, but a society that artificially protects against the risk and consequence of such terrible behavior as well as dilutes the influence of competing organizations—in other words, one that wants to have Francis’ lifestyle without its cost—is what lets him keep it up.