et me offer them an example of a nation that lives up to their ideals... ...it’s Pakistan.
Assuming the statement is made honestly, it shows a severe lack of understanding of libertarian ideals, and/or lack of understanding of Pakistan. Pakistan is rather unfree. In many ways less free than the US. It has an inefficient government, that in many ways people get around, but it also is at times a brutal government, that can suppress freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and other free actions by individuals.
This society embraces traditional religious values and a conservative sensibility.
Some people are both conservative and libertarian, but they are two different things. A society embracing traditional religious values is compatible with libertarianism if they are not imposed by aggression. In Pakistan they often are imposed by aggression, whether from the national governments, lower level governments, tribal hierarchies, radical religious groups, etc.
The budget priority is a strong military, the nation’s most respected institution.
The military is a more clearly legitimate government function, than many other things governments do, but making the military a large focus, isn't a particularly libertarian thing. It may be important for the security of the state, it may be a clear waste of money, or it may be something in between, but a large military is hardly something that makes the state more libertarian.
When generals decide on a policy for, say, Afghanistan, politicians defer to them.
Nothing libertarian about that. If the generals where deciding on more libertarian policy (which they generally are not in this case), then the particular policies could in theory be libertarian, but the idea of generals choosing them isn't libertarian (or even conservative in the sense that its used in the US).
I spend a fair amount of time reporting in developing countries, from Congo to Colombia. They’re typically characterized by minimal taxes
Because their poor economies can't support more than minimal taxes. If you tried to impose high taxes, they would simply ruin the economies, assuming they could be enforced. Rich countries are also harmed by high taxes, but they can endure them. Also some poor countries have low taxes, because instead of taxes they have socialism in the classic sense of government ownership of the means of production (which is one of the big reasons they are poor countries).
In Latin American, African or Asian countries, I sometimes see shiny tanks and fighter aircraft — but schools that have trouble paying teachers.
No. Governments in the US spend more money on education than on national defense. On top of that there is private education spending. Overall schools have less problem paying teachers (who's income has grown over the years), then the US military has maintaining force levels and modern equipment and with inefficiencies in the system, but education has its own share of inefficiencies and costs that escalate unreasonably fast). Education spending has grown faster then military spending over the years. Its become a larger share of our economy (although not as rapidly as say medical care), while defense has over time become smaller. None of which is an argument for bigger defense budgets, there is a fair amount of bloat and waste in the budgets we have now, but the idea that the US is severely shortchanging education spending, while giving the military everything it wants is false. The idea that libertarians generally think resources should go from education to the military is also false. (Some of them would want education to largely be private, while seeing the military as a function that probably has to be done by the government, but a shift to a more private education system wouldn't involve shifting government education spending to the military, but rather reducing government education spending and increasing private education spending.)
Maybe that’s why the growing inequality in America pains me so.
Over time the rich have gotten richer, and the poor have gotten richer. I do care about the absolute welfare of the poor, the relative wealth or income, not so much.
cutbacks in access to college are a scandal
There also largely a fantasy. Sure individual cases of cutbacks occur, but most claimed cutbacks are just reductions in the planned increases. Overall education spending from the federal governments, state governments, local governments, and private sector, for the elementary, middle school/junior high, high school, undergrad, and grad student levels, keep going up.
Police budgets are being cut
Generally they are growing.
Mass transit is underfinanced
How do you define and determine that something is underfinanced? Under or over, these budgets have also increased. And there is a lot of waste and inefficency in these budgets.
a low-tax laissez-faire Eden ...like Pakistan
A nonsensical phrase
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