Arnold Kling notes that we all have flaws, but modern liberals (like James Kwak) and classical liberals (libertarians) have different ideas about what we should do about that:
Modern liberals believe that human flaws should be corrected by government. Every once in a while, they stop to consider the fact that human flaws are also embedded in government. This brings them dangerously close to thinking like libertarians, so, like Kwak, they dance around this issue and then walk away from it. Instead, they tell themselves that there just has to be a way to construct flawless government out of flawed human beings. There just has to.One of the most amazing things to me is that if I were to suggest that we rely on charity rather than government to solve problems, modern liberals would consider me mad. How can we rely on charity? Surely, government is more reliable.
But I think charities are not so unreliable. At least when I donate to an organization that pays for heart surgery for impoverished children, they do some of that. When I donate to support a charter school that takes inner-city youth and puts them in a boarding school to prepare them for college, it turns out that the school does this.
Government, too, promises to do good things with my money. But then I see what they actually do with it, and I think that this is the worst false-advertising scam ever.
Imagine that all of us could send our tax dollars to the charities of our choice. Then in order to get bailout money, AIG would have to hold a bake sale. Would you buy a cookie from AIG to help them out? Think about how many cookies you are buying to help AIG the next time a liberal tells you that it’s crazy to think that we could rely on charity rather than government to help people in need.