Leftists, crunchy cons, and paleo cons hate Wal-Mart. As I looked around that vast space of real service to the least among us, I could only think: God bless this great enterprise. ~Lew Rockwell

Via Scott Richert at The Rockford Files

A word that often comes up in debates about the “crunchy cons” is sanctimonious. Critics use it with great frequency. “Don’t be so santimonious!”, they tell me and others on my side of the debate. No one on the other side has, of course, ever purported to take the moral high ground or judge crunchy conservatism as, say, akin to a revival of Levitical dietary practices and the Law–that would be ludicrous, right? You might think so.

This often seems to mean that criticism of anyone’s habits is simultaneously a claim to righteous superiority, when it is no such thing. I have never stopped to ask them if they know what it means (that might then add “pedantic” to the list of crunchy and paleo flaws). A good example of what it means might be the post above, where we are treated to the description of Wal-Mart as a virtual charitable institution benefiting the poor.

Whenever I hear a libertarian praising this or that for benefiting the poor, I begin to think he must be having me on. Surely these cannot be the same people whose view of social solidarity is something like “Laissez-faire and let God sort them out.” A Christian libertarian will answer, “We may believe in a kind of solidarity and charity. Communities and churches can do it, and meanwhile we’ll let market forces play out!”

And then what happens when you point out that it is precisely corporations like Wal-Mart that transform those very communities beyond all recognition, making the possibility of community self-help less and less practicable (and indeed making it seem quaint and vaguely absurd)? What happens when the small firms, which foster the sense of community that will create the networks and bonds of support necessary for communities to engage in effective self-help, are driven out of business because of their inability to compete with the megacorp?

At a loss for anything else to say, the libertarian will start telling you about how wonderful the low prices are. “Look at all the stuff the poor people can buy now!” If we were speaking simply of necessities, that would be one thing. But it is really more like this: “Look at all the unnecessary things corporations with cheap commodities and bulk buying encourage poor people to buy!” An abundance of cheap, ready-made junk only serves to incite desire to possess those things, which is assuredly not something worthy of praise. Perhaps God will bless the enterprise, but why do I get the sneaky feeling that God does not bless untrammeled materialism?

And who or what will come in to provide other “services” that the now dessicated community once provided to its members? The state, of course, and the libertarians will wonder how it all happened.