Not the brightest bulb on the tree is he?

In the Gospels, government is exposed as evil right from Jesus’ birth. A paranoid Herod is willing to kill all of the babies in the kingdom to try to eliminate the perceived threat represented by Jesus.

Government in our culture is elected by the adult population. Herod was not government, he was a non-elected tyrant representing a foreign occupying force.

Tax collectors are considered de facto sinners, on a par with prostitutes. Libertarians would consider this unfair to prostitutes, but for the times this couldn’t land better.

Tax collectors were part of the occupying force and were viewed as invaders or as collaborators. Taxes collected were not used to improve the lives of the people but to support the military infrastructure.

Jesus himself doesn’t disappoint, either. From the moment he begins his ministry, he wages a nonstop verbal war against the hypocritical, oppressive, tax-devouring Temple priests. Jews at the time were required to pay annual taxes to the priests and were also expected to come and make sacrifices at the Jerusalem Temple. Of course, they had to buy the livestock for the sacrifices from the priests and deal with the priests’ money changers in order to do that.

This has nothing to do with government and everything to do with religion exercising its free market options by charging as much as possible.

That’s why the libertarian from Galilee kicked them out. This would have been considered a revolutionary act.

One can’t help but equate Jerusalem at that time with Washington, DC, an entire city of tax-fed, opulent wealth.

Except the analogy fails at the most basic level. DC wealth, such as it is, is built by and sustained by free market lobbyists influencing the policies of government. That’s hardy tax-fed wealth.

Jesus has no patience for excessive regulation, either. When he encounters a Jewish law that does not address actual criminal activity, he encourages his followers to break it. When the meddling scribes confront Jesus with allowing his disciples to eat without washing their hands, Jesus lets loose with his customary anti-government invective, calling them hypocrites and then instructing “the people” to ignore this idiotic law and focus on not committing real crimes instead. (Mark 7:1-23)

A regulation intended to restrict the spread of diseases that when ignored contributed to the black death several centuries later. A regulation that while not designed to address crime was necessary for the health of the populace (even though the people of the time didn’t know why).

A typical libertarian averse to actually thinking beyond the shallow philosophy of Rand and into the lengthy and complex causal chains that make up modern societies.