George Wallace, electing to run on a third-party ticket in 1968, 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 (and I will) the national ethos.
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