Remember the "nine most terrifying words?" --
I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
Or how about Grover Nordquist's desire to get the federal government "down to the size we can drown in a bathtub"?
While the blogosphere -- and now even in trickles, the MSM -- begin to assess why and what went, but most importantly,
continues to go wrong, let's not forget that the road to where our nation and most pressingly, the poor souls of southern Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama now find ourselves isn't the solely the fault of George W. Bush. He may have stepped on the gas when we (or the Supreme Court, if you prefer) handed him the keys in 2001, but we've been following a bogus map for a generation.
When a combination of rampant Wall Street speculation, Dust Bowl drought conditions, and other factors brought the Great Depression on us, we shifted course. Our nation had just grown too big and too interdependent for the spirit of American individualism and independence to save us. Selling apples on the street wasn't going to solve the problem. Scavenging scraps of metal and wood to build shanty towns wasn't acceptable.
Herbert Hoover didn't cause the Great Depression - but America reached a point where our individual citizens, communities, and states were helpless to lift themselves out of the morass. The capitalist -- the conservative -- would tell you that we just need to let cycles run their course, that eventually, the forces of equilibrium in a free market will set all things right again. To borrow a line often used to rebut the specter of housing bubbles, mountainous debt, and ecological ruin -- In the long run, we're all dead.
In 1932, America decided that relying on the long run to set things right wasn't going to work. People were suffering. People were dying. The great unwashed masses neared a state of revolt.
So we changed the way the nation functioned. We created the Social Security safety net. We embarked on a massive program of government works programs. We quit saying "tough luck" and set aside tough love.... and yes, unfortunately, we also "taxed and spent". As the decades rolled by, we also left no pork barrel unfilled. We wasted and we let mountains of beaurocracy overwhelm the best of intentions. In some cases, we even saw members our citizenry giving up the American dream for the easier path of "gaming the system". We reached a zenith with LBJ's failed war on poverty - and have been backsliding ever since.
In 1980, the backslide culminated with the election of an old-fashioned Goldwater conservative. We heard about welfare moms running rampant, driving Cadillacs on their way to cash welfare checks. Countless Grover Nordquists emerged from the ooze of conservative thinking, providing an ideological backbone that was ably sold to a nation by an actor who was better suited to the role of figurehead King, to borrow from an old Mike Royko column, than president. Our nation's great cities were left to wither on the vine, our nation's programs designed to protect our most vulnerable and help the most stricken in their times of need were slashed.
Whatever respite -or even reversal - Bill Clinton's 1992 election should have provided was detoured as the "centrists" and the seedlings of the DLC told us of a "third way". The third way was nothing more than cleverly packaged "compassionate conservatism". It was doomed to continue down the dead-end road that will sunset our great nation's role of leadership in the world because it was built on the foundation that our federal government was a necessary evil; something to be feared, squeezed, caged, and starved whereever possible.
Perhaps it takes a disaster like this - with the lack of planning, the choas of mis- or missing coordination, the utter hopelessness of stranded patients dying in hospitals, complete lawlessness across New Orleans, and an epic tragedy brewing at refugee centers - for our nation to remember that Uncle Sam can, used to, and maybe should again, do more than just go to war.
It's ludicrous to expect that New Orleans or Biloxi, Louisiana or Mississippi, or even 3 or 4 souther states banding together can somehow handle the massive devastation and overwhelming needs of the stricken area. Even with record donations --- give here, I just did -- the support of friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens, the charity of churches and other organizations, we all make little more than a dent in the disaster.
Louisiana has no aircraft carriers. Mississippi has no vessels suited for massive amphibious operations like the Iwo Jima or Bataan. New Orleans has no military force at its disposal. Biloxi has no hospital ships. There are things that no state, no city, no charity group, can do. Coordinating relief for massive disasters like this is one of them. Marshalling resources in advance and national coordination is another. Positioning people and equipment of the stripes and types needed, from all parts of the country, is yet another.
We've seen diaries about the cuts to SELA. Josh Marshall points out the plans to power down FEMA -- with the plans to replace it nowhere in sight. Despite the claims otherwise, no rational person can honestly say that the National Guardsmen in Iraq couldn't be used, if not aren't sorely needed, in the desparate areas of the gulf coast.
Good points all. However, they're the supporting evidence, not the charge itself.
This isn't about snark, it's not even about scoring political points.
It's about the United States of America needing to wake up and realize that the Articles of Confederation gave way to the constitution because even 200 years ago, patriots recognized that we're all best served by being one nation rather than a loose collection of 13 (or 50) states. It's about realizing that America together can lift itself from tragedies of this scope, cities and states cannot. It's not about destroying regional identities, running schools from Washington DC, national ID cards, or IRS bilking American wallets.
It's time to roll back the idea that "big government" has to necessarily be synonomous with "bad government".
"How can this happen in America?"
It can happen in America when we cease to be Americans and instead become New Yorkers, Texans, Chicagoans, southerners, Democrats, Conservatives -- everything BUT Americans... because somehow - America is bad when it comes in the form of a federal program.
If federal government is inherently "bad" - then trying to beat back a hurricane with our double-edged sword of rugged individualism, states rights, etc -- is worse.