New at Reason

Julian Sanchez | October 3, 2005

Jonathan Rauch detects an ill wind blowing for big government.

Comments

|10.3.05 @ 2:06PM|#

I see no real reason to expect any weakening in big government. Sorry.

|10.3.05 @ 2:12PM|#

"I see no real reason to expect any weakening in big government. Sorry."

Really. People are just going to think "If only we had the right people in charge..."

I don't see that ever changing, at least at no time within the remotely foreseeable future.

|10.3.05 @ 2:14PM|#

If you all get to conflate "George Bush" with "government" (as in, "this is the best we can expect from government"), does that mean I can safely apply conclusions about Lew Rockwell to libertarianism as a whole?

|10.3.05 @ 2:16PM|#

As a followup to something I said earlier, "In case of emergency, break the glass and pull out the ANARCHY." Add, "as long as it's out, keep it out."

That said, I'm afraid I must agree with andy and Eric

|10.3.05 @ 2:19PM|#

joe: you most certainly can.

though all levels of government failed leading up to katrina, in many different ways, those inclined to blame it on bush will do so, just as those inclined to defend bush will blame it on local authorities.

and those of us inclined to think of government as a general problem, or a cancer, or a sickness, a rot, a grossness, a yucky, sticky mess that gums up the bottom of your shoe, eats your leg and steals your wallet when you're not looking...ahem.

you get the idea.

|10.3.05 @ 2:21PM|#

If you all get to conflate "George Bush" with "government" (as in, "this is the best we can expect from government"), does that mean I can safely apply conclusions about Lew Rockwell to libertarianism as a whole?

You're proving Andy's point, joe. "Our big-ass government works great - well, as long as Democrats are in power. And Republicans can't impede it in any way. And..."

|10.3.05 @ 2:45PM|#

does that mean I can safely apply conclusions about Lew Rockwell to libertarianism as a whole?

Only if you want to argue with the libertarian in your head.

Hmm, what if the libertarian in your head is busy arguing with the liberal in his head? This could be sort of like those Russian dolls.

|10.3.05 @ 2:45PM|#

does that mean I can safely apply conclusions about Lew Rockwell to libertarianism as a whole?

Only if you want to argue with the libertarian in your head.

Hmm, what if the libertarian in your head is busy arguing with the liberal in his head? This could be sort of like those Russian dolls.

|10.3.05 @ 2:59PM|#

Inside the libertarian, there are elephants.

And don't get smart with me - it's elephants all the way down.

|10.3.05 @ 3:01PM|#

thoreau,

That was worth reading twice.

|10.3.05 @ 3:08PM|#

thoreau,
I know you didn't mean those nekkid Russian dolls, but I'm easily aroused.

|10.3.05 @ 3:19PM|#

Funny the article bashes big federal government, while the graphic used shows a failure at local levels.

Shouldn't it have been the Mayor lining up busses along with drivers to evacuate the poor? Shouldn't the govenor had put national guard at posts or on guard?

What should the Fed's have done?

Now I agree with this article that its good people are becoming cynical towards the federal government, but I don't agree that its because the federal government so much got fucked up in the Big Easy.

Larry A|10.3.05 @ 3:20PM|#

"Louisiana has the ability to corrupt any program, and it certainly has the capacity to take millions of dollars and turn it to waste,"

I keep remembering that out of the 50 states, Louisiana is the one with state law based on the French Napoleonic Code rather than British Common Law.

|10.3.05 @ 3:37PM|#

And don't get smart with me - it's elephants all the way down.

Heh.

|10.3.05 @ 3:39PM|#

"If you all get to conflate "George Bush" with "government" (as in, "this is the best we can expect from government"), does that mean I can safely apply conclusions about Lew Rockwell to libertarianism as a whole?"

The argument is, at a minimum, you should have a healthy skepticism about the process that resulted in the government we have now. If we believe that the process that creates the government is not capable of producing anything other than sausage, we have no reason to believe that 'the right people' will ever get in there. Not only that, I don't think I've ever seen any of the right people.

|10.3.05 @ 3:52PM|#

And with big government if you crack it open there's a ratchet effect inside. And Don't get samrt with me - ratchets all the way down.

|10.3.05 @ 3:56PM|#

"If you all get to conflate "George Bush" with "government" (as in, "this is the best we can expect from government"), does that mean I can safely apply conclusions about Lew Rockwell to libertarianism as a whole?"

Only if you can point to an established theory that supports the conclusion that Lew Rockwell is inevitably the result of libertarianism.

"Public Choice Theory" does that pretty well with Bush and democratic government.

Further, to say that the levee problem is one of party, not government, ignores the fact that the problems have been known for over thirty years, through administrations of both parties, and yet was never addressed. The only reason this albatross didn't land around Clinton's neck is fortuitous timing. And remember, this is coming from someone who has as much love for Bush as you do, Joe.

|10.3.05 @ 4:26PM|#

quasibill, Chertoff and Brown's unwillingness to respond for days to the Convention Center is the result of personal arrogance and incompetance.

Aren't libertarians supposed to encourage personal responsibility? "The government made me do it" is no excuse for why Michael Chertoff's blowing off the reporters who alerted him to the situation.

|10.3.05 @ 4:35PM|#

I hate to go out on a limb here, but I'm fairly sure that arrogant, incompetent officials have been appointed by presidents before GWB, to ill - even disasterous - effect.

|10.3.05 @ 4:51PM|#

A couple of points- one is that the biggest mistake small-gov't advocates can make is to appear the slightest bit "ebullient" or "smile," as Smith does, when talking about Katrina's aftermath. He specifies "Not the hurricane�the political storm." But people will take things out of context and pounce all over that, especially people who hear what they want to hear and are looking for excuses to bash small-gov't Republicans as heartless. Arguments about this topic, I think, have to be very carefully couched in terms of positive results of private efforts, and criticism of corruption, while going out of the way to sound sympathetic.

The other point is that I always find this reaction odd:

In April of 1995, an anti-government militant bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168. "Anger at Washington Cools in Aftermath of Bombing," reported The Washington Post, releasing a poll showing that satisfaction with the federal government had "shot up" and that the number of people describing themselves as angry at the government had fallen from 16 to 9 percent.

Makes you realize how stupidly irrational people are. I mean, *nothing* in gov't changed to merit a better feeling. How sympathy for victims and wanting to distance oneself from extremist action can lead to such a reversal, is a leap too illogical and stupid for me to understand.

|10.3.05 @ 5:09PM|#

Elvis,

People were not more satisfied with government, just far less comfortable expressing dissatisfaction and anger with government. Liberals of the time were merrily leaping on any small-government rhetoric and likening it to terrorism.

M1EK|10.3.05 @ 5:18PM|#

"The only reason this albatross didn't land around Clinton's neck is fortuitous timing. And remember, this is coming from someone who has as much love for Bush as you do, Joe."

False equation.

Clinton didn't cut the Army Corps "New Orleans" budget and go spend it on a war of choice.

Not spending 'enough' >>>> choosing to spend even less and dump the money into a quagmire.

And this is coming from somebody who, at the time, considered Clinton his third choice for President during both elections.

R C Dean|10.3.05 @ 6:17PM|#

Clinton didn't cut the Army Corps "New Orleans" budget and go spend it on a war of choice.

Nah, he cut it for no good reason, if by "cut" you mean "didn't give them everything they wanted." Because he didn't, you know.

Bush essentially froze the Corps budget, which is a funny kind of "cut" out in the real world.

Of course, everyone also admits that even if Bush had given the Corps every penny it requested, it wouldn't have made any difference. The levees that failed were the ones where the work had been completed. Funding had nothing to do with the flooding in New Orleans.

|10.3.05 @ 6:36PM|#

High-level Corps people have been stating in interviews that Bush giving more money to the Corps wouldn't have done much good. I worked at the New Orleans Corps District Operations Division when I was a student and the money they wasted and the absolutely useless bumps on a log that worked there would depress anyone with a work ethic.

M1EK|10.3.05 @ 7:03PM|#

"Bush essentially froze the Corps budget"

This is a lie.

M1EK|10.3.05 @ 7:05PM|#

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313

"Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars."

And no, I don't think the increased spending would have stopped this disaster. It MIGHT have, probably not. But it IS one place where Clinton would have been a damn sight different than Bush.

Another way he was different was his curious reticence to appoint a crony political hack to lead FEMA. Oops.

But you're not a Republican partisan, are you?

|10.3.05 @ 9:17PM|#

joe, that's turtles all the way down. Blasphemer!

|10.3.05 @ 10:52PM|#

Chertoff = Skelator

|10.3.05 @ 11:36PM|#

Bah. Why are people arguing as though our government has any recognition of opportunity cost? If any administration wanted to prepare for flooding in NO, they'd issue more debt to do it. In this great land of ours, there's nothing we can't do with creative financing.

Failure to fix levies was failure of will and not lack of resources. Everyone since the city was built has had that same failure of will.

|10.3.05 @ 11:42PM|#

Also, in the grand scheme of things, the head of FEMA being a crony, while not smart, meant very little. I'm not convinced at all that if you only had a super genius running FEMA everything would have been great. It isn't like we've been ignorant of this problem. There was just no political will to do anything about it.

Oh, and even if there had been political will and a genius running FEMA, I'm still not convinced that the federal agency could reasonably be expected to be the primary actor in this situation.

|10.4.05 @ 12:52AM|#

Jonathan Rauch detects an ill wind blowing for big government.

Has Jonathan also been touched by a noodly appendage? Even if people aren't happy, what do you think they're going to do about it?

Let's see, the Democrats have always been for bigger government. The Republicans used to be for smaller government but it seems they're not anymore.

I know! I'll switch to voting Democrat! Or if I'm really really in a bad mood I'll actually vote for the sure-to-loose libertarian candidate.

And because most libertarians otherwise end up leaning Republican, it'll split enough Republican vote off that I may as well have voted Democrat directly.

|10.4.05 @ 1:11AM|#

"You can have good government, or you can have Big Government," Smith says, "but you can't have good Big Government. That argument is growing dramatically, and I think Katrina is going to make it grow more."

That argument is irrelevant. Whatever the people "feel", "argue", and "wish for", by and large they won't find small gov't advocates on the Republican ticket. The Republicans have been systematically pulling their support for such people over the past several years.

Bitch all you want about Reagan, but nobody who even whispers his kind of "government isn't the solution, it's the problem" talk won't be getting on the Republican ticket.

The Democrats are the only ones who ought to be smiling. Their opponent has fled the field.

Hakluyt|10.4.05 @ 4:05AM|#

M1EK,

How would they have magically have increased the levee system's capability to withstand a CAT4 or 5 hurricane over a two year period? So, how would it "might have" stopped the disaster when its clearly the case that the proximate cause of the disaster wasn't a two year period of spending but decades of ignoring a problem through both Democratic and Republican administrations (and of course a Congress flipping through various versions of party control)?

But you're not a Democratic partisan, are you?

Jason Ligon,

It isn't like we've been ignorant of this problem.

The city knew about the problem of evacuating the poor from at least 1998 onward from their own drills.

I'm still not convinced that the federal agency could reasonably be expected to be the primary actor in this situation.

Local first responders, government, etc. are always going to be the primary resource for the first couple of days in any significant disaster.

Hakluyt|10.4.05 @ 4:07AM|#

M1EK & R.C. Dean,

Oh, and if my point isn't already clear enough, a pox on both your houses.

M1EK|10.4.05 @ 9:21AM|#

Hakluyt,

I wasn't claiming that failing to CUT spending on the levees (as Bush did) would have prevented the disaster. It MIGHT have, probably not. Go back and look, and you'll see that same sentence.

I brought this up because RC Dean, the Republican sock puppet, claimed that people are mad at Bush just "because he's the unlucky sap in charge at the wrong time", and that they'd have been just as mad at Clinton. Simply put - Bush cut the levee funding to fight a war in Iraq; Clinton would probably not have cut the funding, at a bare minimum. Some substantial minority of the complainers are either mad because of that funding cut, or at least being given rhetorical cover by it.

|10.4.05 @ 10:59AM|#

Haluyt, while the levee work probably couldn't have made much of a difference over a couple of years, the wetlands restorations might have.

Hakluyt|10.4.05 @ 3:54PM|#

M1EK,

That you even think that it "Might Have" is down right dumb (note I addressed your "Might Have" claim in my statement) and points to partisanship.

joe,

...the wetlands restorations might have.

The wetlands restoration continues apace since that requires little or no funding. Wetlands restoration is based largely on the flow of water (and thus sediment) into the delta, and the devices built for such purposes are already in situ. I know, I've stood within a few feet of them.