George McGovern advocates fundamental change in American government. This is common knowledge. But like most new knowledge, it is false. True, McGovern has a radical foreign policy (“Resolved, the United States should get out of Arizona”). But his principal domestic philosophy is depressingly familiar. His proudest boast is that his government will get involved in redistributing wealth. What makes this more depressing than menacing is the fact that the government today does very little else but redistribute wealth.
We have a welfare state, soggy with redistributionist policies. McGovern accepts in principle a government that is up to its jowls in redistributing wealth. Thus he accepts the primary principle of the status quo. All he really wants to do is redirect the redistribution.
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