Author: Andrew Sullivan

One of the more irritating aspects of the post-Katrina debate has been the assertion by some liberals that the failure to provide emergency assistance for citizens hit by a natural diasaster is a function of conservatism. The notion is that conservatives hate government so much that they do not even think the government has an obligation to act in a natural disaster. In fact, the opposite is true. Real conservatives (I’m not referring to the crew now in the White House) favor energetic executive action where only it can do the job: police, war, disaster relief, a basic social welfare net. What we’re against is social engineering, redistributive taxation, over-regulation of private activity, etc. What conservatives want is a smaller yet stronger government. And getting smaller helps government focus on what it really should do, not on all the illusory goals that some liberals believe in, like, er, ending human inequality. Here’s Hayek, for example, cited on Jack Balkin’s blog, perhaps the philosophical lode-star for a certain kind of conservatism:

[T]here can be no doubt that some minimum of food, shelter, and clothing, sufficient to preserve health and the capacity to work, can be assured to everybody…
Nor is there any reason why the state should not assist the individuals in providing for those common hazards of life against which, because of their uncertainty, few individuals can make adequate provision. Where, as in the case of sickness and accident, neither the desire to avoid such calamities nor the efforts to overcome their consequences are as a rule weakened by the provision of assistance…the case for the state’s helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong….
To the same category belongs also the increase of security through the state’s rendering assistance to the victims of such “acts of God” as earthquakes and floods. Wherever communal action can mitigate disasters against which the individual can neither attempt to guard himself nor make provision for the consequences, such communal action should undoubtedly be taken.

What has happened under Bush is not a function of conservatism. It’s a function of abandoning conservatism.

“Most conservative books are pseudo-books: ghostwritten pastiches whose primary purpose seems to be the photo of the “author” on the cover. What a tumble! From ‘The Conservative Mind’ to ‘Savage Nation’; from Clifton White to Dick Morris; from Willmoore Kendall and Harry Jaffa to Sean Hannity and Mark Fuhrman–all in little more than a generation’s time. Whatever this is, it isn’t progress.” – Andy Ferguson, Weekly Standard.

YGLESIAS AWARD NOMINEE II: “When Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi stands up and proposes a Marshall Plan for the gulf states, as she did on Thursday, she reminds voters how bankrupt her party is when it comes to new ideas.” – Eleanor Clift, Newsweek.

(The new Yglesias Award is given to writers or any public person who tells truths likely to be highly unpopular with their natural supporters or political allies.)

Robert A. George wonders how much more he can take:

First came House Speaker Dennis Hastert openly considering “bulldozing” parts of New Orleans — at a point when the city was still 80 percent under water, bodies were still being fished out and people were still stranded in the convention center…
Then, former First Lady Barbara Bush uttered words in a radio interview which will unfortunately haunt her remaining years: “What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.” Those that heard the contents state that she notably “chuckled” during the last phrase.
Now, for some, Katrina may present new opportunity. But if poor children lost their parents and were adopted by a wealthy couple, would one chuckle that things were “working well for them”?
And then, to complete the hat trick, an actual Louisiana congressman pops up telling lobbyists, “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.” Baker claimed that he was misquoted or misheard or something…
Honestly, I might be inclined to give Baker the benefit of the doubt, if it didn’t seem like this disaster has given Republicans the opportunity to “share” how they really feel. Similarly, under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t include Barbara Bush’s comments. But, not this time. It just happens too often to ignore them anymore.
Ironically, the concern uttered here is not that the statements are necessarily racist or suggest some animus toward minorities. That’s not the point. It is that the speakers seem unable to see those suffering as as actual people.

Robert has struggled mightily in the GOP for years and years. I wonder if he has the steadiness of nerve to continue. And if you think his cognitive and moral dissonance is rough, try being a gay Republican …

Someone broke the off-the-record rule.

GOOD NEWS IN KABUL: Oxblog updates the news from the Afghan elections. It’s amazing they are such a non-event in some ways. But this really is a triumph for the West and the Bush-Blair policy of democratization.

More evidence of continuing FEMA disarray piles up.

Merkel underperforms; the FDP does much better than expected. Full bloggy coverage at MedienKritik.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “On Friday, you posted a fellow reader’s comments on Bush as a man of integrity. I felt compelled to say something about this issue. A man of integrity is a man who is consistent in his values and actions, and those values in turn are grounded in reason and truth. The word “integrity”, however, has been hijacked by everyone, especially politicians who no longer understand what it means, but who know that it is a word that people associate with respectability.

A man who hires somebody like Karl Rove to obfuscate and spin the truth and to vicitimize minorities for political purposes is no man of integrity. A man who has so ineptly planned for the security of this nation (and Iraq) as was vividly revealed by Katrina when he has stood in front of millions of his citizens saying otherwise is no man of integrity. A man whose government is filled with incompetent cronies, and who values loyalty above merit is no man of integrity. A man who spends so irresponsibly the money of generations to come and who does not think of the economic and social consequences for this nation’s future is no man of integrity. A man who courts the views of extremists and fundamentalists whose own views are grounded in hate and fear and who would choose to scapegoat homosexuals to win votes is no man of integrity. A man who would ignore scientific evidence and instead professes support for the dodgy theory of intelligence design is no man of integrity.

The word integrity actually needs to mean something. It should not be a platitudinous word that is used by men so flippantly. Your reader is wrong in this regard. George Bush is no man of integrity.”

In retrospect, I made three basic miscalculations in favoring the war to depose Saddam three years ago. I thought Saddam had stockpiles of WMDs the discovery of which would bolster support for the war after liberation; I believed we would have enough troops to keep the peace; and I thought the massive reconstruction funds would buy popular support for the occupation. Wrong on all three counts. Here’s a story from the NYT today on the reconstruction of Najaf. Najaf is remarkably free from major violence, and yet the reconstruction is still a shambles, hobbled by poor oversight, corruption, delays, translation problems and general incompetence. Anyone who knows contractors of any kind knows some of this is part of the process. But you just have to read this story to see how widespread this mess is. Again: issue one for the Bush administration is government competence. They don’t seem to have much. And in the end, with even the best policy in the world, competence matters. Iraq is particularly apposite here, because if there was ever a case in which we knew we had to get it right, this was it. And yet, they seem never at a loss for excuses for failure. Discouraging doesn’t quite capture the essence of this. Maddening is more like it.

BLAIR AND THE BEEB: He gets it.

Hey, a new award, and this time a nice one. It’s an award for bloggers – or anyone else for the matter – who are prepared to alienate their core readership with some unpleasant truths. Matt Yglesias wins the first one and gets the eternal glory and fame that comes with a mention on this blog. His winning item:

I think I should point out that despite the large role the DHS bait-and-switch and the outrageous treatment of Max Cleland now plays in liberal mythology, Democrats should keep in mind that that was ultimately a debacle of their own making. The entire DHS concept was cooked up initially as a Democratic Party political ploy and never made a huge amount of sense.

Good stuff. Keep the honesty coming. If you see a right- or left-wing writer fessing up to their own side’s errors or mistakes, let me know. We need more of it.

Where’s the love? I actually have some vague memory of Mike Kinsley, when he was my (inspirational) boss at The New Republic, having a single key on his keyboard that would convert all semi-colons into a period, followed by a capital letter.

WALTER ON BLOGGING: I missed this but Walter Kirn wrote a short piece for Time on his experience as a novice blogger on this site last month. It’s a hoot. Money quote:

I didn’t eat that day and barely stood up. The following morning I read through what I’d written but I couldn’t remember writing it. Nor, upon deep reflection, did I agree with it. But who had time for deep reflection? I hadn’t blogged yet and it was 7 a.m., which meant that the commuters two time zones east of me had reached their offices already and were about to go online. The rotation of the earth and the rhythmic movements of the masses didn’t matter when I wrote for magazines, but I was working at the speed of light now, even if I wasn’t thinking at it. Knowing that an empty website would prompt a hundred nasty e-mails, I blazed through a blog entry about the state of journalism, repeating arguments that I’d made at dinner parties and illustrating them with stories that I’d rehearsed in barrooms. I finished the piece in twenty minutes, a record, and twenty minutes later, via e-mail, a producer from C-SPAN asked me if I’d be free to talk about it on the air that Friday.

Yep, that’s pretty much how it is. Then do it most days for five years and … I have to take a nap now.

“You really hit the nail on the head for me when you talked about not watching Bush’s speech because you’re just sick of him. That’s how I feel too – I can’t believe we have to live with this guy as president for another 3 years and four months. This presidency has become like “In a Gadda Da Vida” – it goes on and on and on, and yet goes nowhere. I haven’t stopped being a Republican, I’ve just stopped being one who supports Bush. But just to be fair, I think he faces one serious political obstacle to deficit reduction that true conservatives aren’t acknowledging: if Bush tried to cut spending anyplace in government, do you think for one minute that Democrats, or their water-carriers in the media, would do anything other than portray him as a vicious monster desperate to throw the poor and the old into the streets? In fact, Bush’s response to Katrina last night – spend lots of money – is the natural Rovian response to the shellacking he’s taken for heartlessly letting so many suffer in New Orleans.

Yes, Bush is a clown. But I’m afraid the real death of conservatism occurred when Newt Gingrich overplayed his hand in the budget showdown with Clinton in 1995, thus making politicians terrified of ever again trying to reduce spending on any government program. You want to blame someone for our bloated deficit, Andrew? Blame us all, because as a country we are not willing to accept that we cannot spend any amount of money we want on government programs.”