No, No McGovern (Rothbard, 1972)

(Extracted from the October edition (pdf, 8 pages) of the Libertarian Forum.)

No, No McGovern

Having attacked Richard Nixon since the inception of his Administration, having armed early on for a "Dump Nixon" stance bv libertarians. I now have to stand up and report that I cannot swallow George McGovern or the McGovernite movement for which he stands as a bumbling front man. I agree with every word of criticism that Joe Peden has for President Nixon; but I come not to praise Richard Nixon but to bury George McGovern.

The argument for dumping Nixon was always for me a presumption rather than an absolute commandment. The presumption was for the pro-peace candidate and for the candidate out of power, and therefore my inclination was to support the Democratic nominee whoever he might be. Other things being equal I would have, but other things are not equal, and for me the monstrousness of the McGovernite movement overrides all other considerations in this campaign.

Specifically, I cannot abide McGovernism for two basic reasons. First is his economic program, which would involve a compulsory egalitarianism and a collectivism far beyond anything contemplated by Mr. Nixon. The McGovernite proposal of $1000 grant for every man, woman, and child in America would mean a $210 billion monstrosity that would have to be financed by crippling taxation on the middle class, on all people making over $12,000 a year. The press and the public have been confused in lumping together the "populism" and the "tax reform" measures of McGovern and of George Wallace. Governor Wallace proposes the lowering of taxes on the mass of Americans, middle and working class alike; McGovern proposes the drastic raising of taxes on these same Americans. George Wallace would lower the exploitation of the average American by the State; George McGovern would enormously increase that exploitation. In short, Wallace is the true populist, while McGovern proposes a giant leap into oppressive collectivism under the guise of a phony populist rhetoric.

The rebuttal to this charge by my pro-McGovern friends is that Congress would never pass the McGovern program anyway, so why worry? Perhaps; but for me one of the most chilling moments of the Democratic convention was when Speaker Carl Albert arose to pledge his eternal support to McGovern as President. Congress has been supine for decades, and I simply cannot bring myself to trust the cause of the last shreds of economic sanity to the likes of Carl Albert. I don't think we can afford the risk.

My second overriding problem with McGovern is the McGovernite movement itself, particularly as reflected in the lunatic and dangerous quota system which is seeks to impose on American life. No longer is status and advancement to depend on the achievement of each individual; instead, we are to have coerced quotas to bring the "oppressed" groups in the population up to their numerical share of the total population. The groups favored with the "oppressed" label are, of course, highly selective, being confined to women, blacks, youth, and Chicanos, all of whom are to receive their quotal share regardless of individual merit or of the choice of the voters. Already, such McGovern supporters as Jack Newfield and Joe Flaherty have written angrily and bitterly of the discrimination thus imposed on groups not favored by the McGovernites: for where is the quotal representation for blue collar workers, Irish, Italians, Poles, etc.? Furthermore, the imposing of quotas to compel a rise in status of one group means ipso facto that other groups are going to be coercively burdened and discriminated against by the McGovernites. These groups are of course never openly mentioned, but they amount to the most successful groups, largely adult male heterosexual WASPS and Jews.

In its destructive quota thinking, the McGovernite movement is of a piece with its economic program: in both cases, the motivating drive is a compulsory egalitarianism that would tear down the successful on behalf of a highly selective group of the so-called "oppressed". Of course, at bottom, the egalitarianism is as phony as the McGovernite daim to populism and to representing a cross-section of the "peepul". The true reflection of McGovernite "populism" is the statistic that no less than 39% of the delegates to the Democratic convention have attended graduate school! What we are seeing then is a naked grab for power on the part of an eager new elite of graduate students and upper-middle class "reformers" (those who used to be called "parlor pinks.") It is a drive to fasten a new Mandarin class of self-styled intellectuals upon the country, a class that would reach for absolute power and the crushing of other groups and indeed of the bulk of American citizens. Our current ruling classes, as reprehensible as they are, at least allow for a great deal of pluralism, and for relatively secure status for most of the groups in the population. We can see from the ruthlessness of their quota system that the McGovernite elite would be far more totalitarian and hence far more dangerous in their wielding of State power. The sooner and the more completely that the McGovernite movement is crushed to smithereens, the more viable will be the long-run climate of individual freedom in America.

The McGovernite movement is, in short, in its very nature a kick in the gut to Middle America. And yet the libertarian movement, in its program for getting the government off the backs of the individual, aims to be the fulfillment of the aspirations of that same Middle America. When Middle America, therefore inevitably responds in November by its kick in the gut to the McGovernite movement, it behooves libertarians to stand and cheer. The sooner McGovernism is disposed of, the better for us all. Why in the world should libertarians, whose principles are at an opposite pole from McGovernism, agree to tar themselves with the revield McGovernite brush?

It is important, too, for libertarians to drive the lesson home after November that the Nixon victory will be not so much an endorsement of Nixon's Presidency as it wlll be the absolute repudiation of McGovernite collectivism. The path will then hopefully be cleared for a further expansion of libertarian ideas and activity among the American public.

For me, there was an extra dimension of aesthetic horror at the McGovernite convention. For as I watched the convention, I began to have a sense of déjà vu, of having seen all this hogwash before; suddenly, I realized the connection: for what I was seeing was an updated version of the Henry WalIace campaign of 1948. There was the same emphasis on left-wing youth, on the "oppressed" minorities; and there was the same emphasis on Old Left folk-songs. Twice in his acceptance speech George McGovern (a former delegate to the Henry Wallace convention) solemnly quoted from left-wing folk songs; and when he ended his speech with the Woody Guthrie "This land is your land, this land is my land, from the redwood forests to the New York island . . . ", I thought I was living in a rousing comic parody of Old Left baloney. Except that the parody, alas!, was all unconscious; what we were seeing was the worst of the Old Left, from official program to aesthetic values, at last triumphant in the Democratic party. I raise the spectre of Henry Wallace not to red-bait; for the real problem with the Wallace movement was not its Communist associations but its rampant Old Leftism, from its economic program to its aesthetic attitudes.

And while McGovern would clearly be more in favor of peace than Richard Nixon, the peace and the "isolationism" would be strictly limited. For the McGovern foreign policy is unfortunately not "isolationism" at all, but a recredescence of the Wallace and Truman policies before the Korean conflict; in short, McGovern stands for a nuclear deterrent (albeit at lower cost) plus a maintenance of American troops and interventionism in Europe and the Middle East. One of the most shameful aspects of McGovernism at the convention (which went unrecorded by the media) was the way in which McGovern consented to the Jackson platform plank, pledging continued Anerican troops in Europe and the Mediterranean for the support of Israel, and ramming this plank down the throats of the reluctant delegates. In a recent New York Review of Books, McGovern supporter I. F. Stone perceptively termed McGovern's foreign and military policy "left-wing McNamaraism", which means maintaining military intervention in Europe and the Middle East while cutting our losses in Indo-China. While this would be superior to the Nixonite maintenance of the war in Indo-China, it is far from the isolationism and neutrality of libertarian dreams. And on such civil libertarian questions as amnesty and abortion, McGovern has already gone far to undercut his own previously libertarian positions.

On balance, then, McGovernism offers little good and much evil for the libertarian; in the 1972 election I hold that McGovernism is the greater evil and that therefore we should all look forward with equanimity to its pulverization in November.