Few things peeve me more than Merkin war mongering gLibertarians claiming themselves to be "classic liberals". So given two posts in the last 24 hours by Glenn Greenwald and Atrios/Aravosis, I decided to go digging in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. Specifically in Book 5, Chapter 3 on Public Debt. I may have some major differences with Adam Smith's notions and priorities, but he's a far more palatable read than the Randroids and gLibertarians, who take his name in vain.

The primary focus for Adam Smith's discussion of Public Debt was in relation to wars, notably in defence of opening markets or obtaining resources.

v.3.37
The ordinary expence of the greater part of modern governments in time of peace being equal or nearly equal to their ordinary revenue, when war comes they are both unwilling and unable to increase their revenue in proportion to the increase of their expence. They are unwilling for fear of offending the people, who, by so great and so sudden an increase of taxes, would soon be disgusted with the war; and they are unable from not well knowing what taxes would be sufficient to produce the revenue wanted. The facility of borrowing delivers them from the embarrassment which this fear and inability would otherwise occasion. By means of borrowing they are enabled, with a very moderate increase of taxes, to raise, from year to year, money sufficient for carrying on the war, and by the practice of perpetually funding they are enabled, with the smallest possible increase of taxes, to raise annually the largest possible sum of money.

Pretty classic description of the Busheviks, who have refused to put the costs of the Iraq War in to the budget. After 4 and a half years, the war is still funded through off budget emergency supplementals with no requirement for revenue offsets. Do you hear any gLibertarians calling for raising taxes in the US to pay off the war debts? Do you hear any gLibertarians calling for an end to borrowing to fund the Iraq War? In fact you had Alan Greenspan, a so-called classic liberal and confirmed Ayn Rand disciple, supporting tax cuts at the beginning of GDumbya's first term in order to avoid paying off the Federal debt too quickly and focus on revenue reduction rather than debt reduction. And then he testified in a time of war to make those tax cuts permanent. Can you get much more anti-Adam Smith? {Brad DeLong in Sept 2005 discussing a Paul Krugman article on Greenspan discussing the tax cuts, the dot com bubble and the housing bubble. Read the comments for full effect as the readers nudge Mr DeLong for being too kind. The readers seem to have a special precognition given the recent and possible upcoming drop in interest rates by the US Federal Reserve to bail out speculators in the housing bubble.}

Following immediately upon the previous quotation, Adam Smith wrote:

In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace. They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory from a longer continuance of the war.

How could you not read that today and not think of this post by Glenn Greenwald over at Salon on the raving war mongers among the gLibertarians and FrumpyHouseCoatMedia and Malkintents, many of whom fashion themselves to be "classic liberals".

I don't even know where to start with this one. Go read the full thing. From the homophobic invective to the pr0n script S&M martyr fantasies to the racism built around a primary school beatdown of Norman Podhoretz, you see the people that Adam Smith scorned for getting vicarious Viagra from the continuance of war, while running the public treasury in to massive debt to fund their personal inconvenience-free thrills.