A shameful response to the US's shameful response

David Weinberger posted last night about the shockingly small amount of money the United States was pledging to the Tsunami victims. I posted about it briefly at the PBAHQ, and got tracked back by a British professor named David Smith who discussed the matter in more detail:

It is, then, a shock to read these sentiments:

The United States government, however, should not give any money to help the tsunami victims. Why? Because the money is not the government's to give. Every cent the government spends comes from taxation. Every dollar the government hands out as foreign aid has to be extorted from an American taxpayer first. … The reason politicians can get away with doling out money that they have no right to and that does not belong to them is that they have the morality of altruism on their side. According to altruism--the morality that most Americans accept and that politicians exploit for all it's worth--those who have more have the moral obligation to help those who have less. This is why Americans--the wealthiest people on earth--are expected to sacrifice (voluntarily or by force) the wealth they have earned to provide for the needs of those who did not earn it. The Ayn Rand Institute, California

David Galbraith comments on the latter:

The argument being that all money should come from individual donations. … By extension, should all Iraq rebuilding money come from donations from those who were in favor of invasion? Should the invasion itself have been funded from donations? It's a nice thought, perhaps the Iraq war would have never happened if people had to put their money where their mouth is. But democracy ain't like that, you can't hold a referendum for everything. Society is a flawed but necessary and emergent phenomenon. If there were enough followers of Rand, presumably they could declare independence and avoid taxes. But it wouldn't be long before the donation system failed and Randyland started to raise taxes. The creed of extreme libertarianism will always fail by reductio ad absurdum. My main problem with Randys is that they like to think of themselves as members of an elite club of successful rationalists, promoting charity and voluntary donation over tax, not a cult for self-righteous, mediocre people with uncharitable instincts - a 'banality' of evil.