We should not be shocked to learn that Michael Kinsley doesn?t get John McCain?s intense focus on the ?spread the wealth? comment Barack Obama made to ?Joe the Plumber.?
Kinsley belittles McCain?s response in a new TIME column. The article is useful, but not for advancing Kinsley?s argument.
Instead he demonstrates that he makes the common mistake among those on the Left of confusing sharing ? a voluntary activity ? with government-mandated redistribution. Kinsley also treats us to this assertion:
We all tend to think that it’s someone else’s wealth that needs to be spread around and that it ought to be spread in our direction. But the principle that the unequal distribution of wealth is a legitimate concern and government policies should mitigate it has been part of American democracy since at least the New Deal. In fact, it is a commonplace that the moderate wealth-spreading of the New Deal saved American democracy. Today collecting checks from people and issuing checks to other people ? or the same people ? is the government’s main domestic activity.
OK, let?s take this sentence by sentence. Sentence one: wrong. We certainly don?t all think that way. Except for those who believe themselves to be victims of class oppressors, I suspect most of us don?t think much at all about spreading other people?s wealth around. We?d like to keep our own wealth and have the opportunity to build it. Once we?ve satisfied the needs of ourselves and our families, we?re happy to share wealth voluntarily with people and causes we choose.
Sentence two: I?d buy it if Kinsley had substituted ?idea? or ?notion? for ?principle.? By using ?principle,? he asserts incorrectly that this idea has had near-universal support. It hasn?t. The battle over wealth redistribution has been a key element of the American political debate for decades. Perhaps Kinsley forgets how the rejection of his ?principle? helped propel Ronald Reagan to two terms in the White House.
Sentence three: One suspects Kinsley uses ?commonplace? rather than ?truism? or ?fact? because he knows the idea asserted is false. The New Deal extended the Great Depression and built a modern-day Democratic Party based on interest-group politics. It did not ?save democracy.?
Sentence four: Absolutely true. And that?s a huge problem. Government exists to protect rights, not to give governing elites the power to choose economic winners and losers.