(Still) more on "Catholicism v. Libertarianism"

Over at dotCommonweal ("Don't Call us Libertarians!"), Matt Boudway responds to this piece and returns to an issue / debate/ question / distraction that I've tried to address a number of times here at MOJ, namely, the asserted tension between "libertarianism" and Catholic Social Tradition.

I continue to agree entirely with the claim that Catholicism proposes a moral anthropology that is importantly and significantly different from the vision proposed by some writers, thinkers, and politicians who embrace or reasonably deserve the label "libertarian."  (Robby George once called libertarianism a "heresy" and, given the target, I think he was right.)  At the same time, I think that, for too many Catholics, "libertarian" is becoming little more than an epithet that one attaches to particular policy proposals or stances one does not support, whether or not those proposals or stances actually depend on or reflect "libertarian" premises.  As I argued in more detail here, and here, and here,  "laissez-faire libertarianism" is, in my view, usually, a straw man.   A bit: 

 I have no interest in (my understanding of) the "objectivism" of Ayn Rand.  It seems to me that the best and most morally attractive legal-and-economic regimes will be democratic-capitalist and constitutionalist with appropriate and effective social-welfare-protecting programs and constraints.  But, it is not “Randian” to think that the basic “liberal” ("libertarian"?) insight -- i.e., governments should be limited by law and non-state ordering and associations should be protected and respected by law remains, well, insightful.

I agree . . . that conversations about public policy should be couched in terms that treat ideas like "competition" and "consumer choice" as means and mechanisms.  But, it's worth remembering that they are, often, very effective means and mechanisms.  To the extent they are, let’s use them!  Sometimes, “libertarian” (or "free market" or "non-state" or "private ordering") policies are the better ones, not so much because of imperatives connected with deep anthropological premises or because of an idolatrous attachment to autonomy, but because . . . they [again, sometimes] work better (at bringing about human flourishing and common good, properly understood).

Matt writes, "There are those who believe that markets are essentially self-correcting, that the state should not concern itself with distributive justice, and that worries about inequality are reducible to envy.  But Pope Francis isn't among them, and neither were his predecessors."  I certainly agree with the second sentence, but I am still pretty confident that the number of "conservative Catholics" who fit the description in the first sentence is very small.  The questions that tends to divide Catholics-who-all-things-considered-vote-Republican and Catholics-who-all-things-considered-vote-Democratic are, it seems to me, "how much?", "on balance, what should we do?", and "who what extent?" questions.