On the Corner, Kevin D. Williamson lays out some principles of free markets and some arguments against smothering them under a welfare state:
For instance, one may believe that drugs should be legal, and that people should not use them. One may believe that pornography should be legal, and that it is morally repugnant. Likewise, one may believe that there exists a positive moral obligation to assist the poor and the vulnerable, and that enforcing that obligation at gunpoint is wrong or at least morally problematic in and of itself and also subtracts the possibility of virtue from the transaction.