Libertarians do not see the value to the country of providing tax incentives to couples who marry and make sacrifices to raise the next generation, usually in the form of one parent staying home and keeping deeply involved in the lives of their children while the other works for a paycheck. Libertarians have become used to the idea that America is OK with an increasingly maladjusted and malcontented population of fruits, nuts and flakes, perhaps because that's who they are.
Only Phyllis Schlafly, it seems, is old enough and conservative enough to remind people today how hard it was and how long it took to achieve "married filing jointly" in 1948, but when she is gone none will be left to carry the torch. Instead we will be left with the fiddlers like Gov. Rick Perry and the kooks like John Fund who will preside over the crack-up of America.
Here is John Fund, for National Review, just another reason I stopped subscribing long ago:
"The cherished principle of separating church and state should be extended as much as possible into separating marriage and state. ... But instead of fighting over which marriages gain its approval, government would end the business of making distinctions for the purpose of social engineering based on whether someone was married. A flatter tax code would go a long way toward ending marriage penalties or bonuses. We would need a more sensible system of legal immigration so that fewer people would enter the country solely on the basis of spousal rights."
You see, it doesn't just stop with the one thing. Everything conservative must go: America's Protestant inheritance, the primacy of the nuclear family and national identity rooted in law and order. Libertarians, like other ideologues, aren't called the terrible simplifiers for nothing.
