What's the Matter with Frank?

So there I was, reading the Wall Street Journal, and what do I see? Thomas Frank attacking AF, the organization that so kindly pays me to write this humble weblog, as “one of the lesser libertarian nonprofits in the city.” His column was less about AF in particular than libertarian nonprofits in general. Apparently, DC libertarians are whiny bitches.

According to Frank, we DC-libertarians rail against government subsidies while, at the same time, we subsist on subsidies of our own. We are the rankest of hypocrites—condemning charity with the left hand while secretly taking it with the right.

Hm. Count me as unconvinced. Maybe the average Cato-ite (of which I’ve known more than a few) doesn’t demand excess funds (or complain about not receiving them) because he knows he is not worth those funds. That there is, in fact, a market for non-profit staffers–and it is limited. Indeed, Frank acknowledges as much at the end of his column when he says “To their credit, the nonprofit libertarians I watched the other night did not ask for sympathy. Their own doctrine won’t permit it. Having spent years urging lawmakers to wreck the social order that once made occupations like theirs tenable, they will cling stubbornly to their free-market idol all the way down.”

But wait! There is something going on in that last ’graph not seen in the rest of the column. We’re not actually hypocrites at all! After all, we refuse to demand a hand-out. Instead, we “cling stubbornly” to the free-market.

Ah. So we’re just like the poor working class Democrats Barack Obama so frequently mocks for clinging to their guns and their Bibles. Silly us! As soon as we realize that the free market is so markedly flawed, we’ll realize the truth! We SHOULD be demanding more from the nonprofits!!!! How dare they not realize our worth, free market be damned! We could get anything we want from Cato if we were to, say, strike!

Frank’s column is, to say the least, silly. The proletariat that comprises DC libertarians exists solely because the demand—from non-profits and others—is already in place. If Cato, the CEI, AF, and the rest were to leave, hard-core libertarians would find other things to do. But we wouldn’t leave DC.