George Wallace, electing to run on a third-party ticket, disdained association with either of the two alternatives on the grounds that there was not a "dime's difference between the parties." At a technical level he was substantially correct.
Wallace's scorn for the essential equivalence of the two major parties might today be replicated by the Libertarian Party. It would emphasize such similarities as wildly excessive spending in the public sector (true), and a continuing commitment to high federal spending (true what the Democrats would save from reduced defense expenditures they would spend through one of their welfare agencies). Both parties believe in federal Social Security, in federal minimum-wage laws, in federal subsidies for education, medical care, and (now) day care. Seen from the level of a populist (the Wallaceite) or a neo-anarchist (the Libertarian), it does not matter who wins. But their vision is unreliable, and their prescriptions dangerous. Because there looms between the two parties a crystallizing difference in the matter of what one might call the national ethos. (Everett Carll Ladd Jr., Nelson Wikstrom, 1993)
It is timely to reintroduce the problem of deracination. We hear much about philosophical solipsism, and it is certainly true of that conservatism defined by libertarians that the ties between the citizen and the state are of a desiccated, contractual nature. The individual (in the libertarian model) pays over to the state a part of his revenue, and in return for this the state ensures that citizen certain immunities against aggression by others: other countries, other people and his own state. He agrees, moreover, to abide by the will of the majority, but he holds the majority responsible for any excesses that impinge on his liberties.
In this model, government has certainly become excessive in an America that taxes to provide not only.........
