New Orleans is the fulfillment of the Republican dream

George Lakoff warns that we face a serious risk of missing the real lesson of the Katrina tragedy:

The moral of Katrina is mostly being missed. It is not just a failure of execution (William Kristol), or that bad things just happen (Laura Bush). It was not just indifference by the President, or a lack of accountability, or a failure of federal-state communication, or corrupt appointments in FEMA, or the cutting of budgets for fixing levees, or the inexcusable absence of the National Guard off in Iraq. It was all of these and more, but they are the effects, not the cause.

The cause was political through and through -- a matter of values and principles. The progressive-liberal values are America's values, and we need to go back to them. The heart of progressive-liberal values is simple: empathy (caring about and for people) and responsibility (acting responsibly on that empathy). These values translate into a simple principle: Use the common wealth for the common good to better all our lives. In short, promoting the common good is the central role of government.

If, in the coming days, we focus only on the incompetence of the Bush adminstration then we are, in effect, saying that Republicans could be good leaders, just not these particular Republicans.

We must instead make the assertion that Republicanism, at its core, is an abandoment of leadership. It is a moral philosophy that says that only you can help yourself and if you fail then that is your own damn fault. If grandma drowns in the nursing home its because she wasn't strong enough to get herself out of the way of the flood in time. If your baby dies of dehydration its because you weren't strong enough to find her water in time. If you die in the coming days because of diseases floating in the waters of Lake George then its because you weren't strong enough to fight off the diseases that are just a part of life.

That is the world Republicans are selling us. That is the world that lead to New Orleans. That is the world that will lead to more New Orleans.

It wasn't incompetence. New Orleans was the direct fulfillment of the Republican plan for America.

Update

Some might disagree with the point by saying that Bush has suffered some pretty harsh criticism this past week and that his polling numbers are tanking. But the point of Lakoff's post and my agreement with it is not that there hasn't been any criticism. The point is that the criticism is not directed at the right target.

The criticism of Bush and the feds in the last week has primarily been on the issue of competence. But we won't win back control of the government if the argument is purely one about competence.

Why?

Because argument based on competence concedes that the Republican philosophy of government might work if it just had the right people in charge.

Thus, even the harsh criticisms of Bush and company won't help Democratic fortunes because we aren't making any argument that the flaw in Bush's response is not in his competence (though there is that) but in his whole moral point of view.

New Orleans is not an example of a poorly executed Republican philosophy of government. It is the direct result of a well executed Republican philosophy of government.