The New Road

Letter to the Editor

I sent this along to our local paper, The Argus:

Welcome to the new America. You are now a survivalist. Thought it was tough enough doing the 80 hour work week and raising your kids? Now Katrina has shown us that you have another responsibility, your own survival in a time of crisis over an indefinite period. Not just the 48 or 72 hours that we thought we had to deal with before.

Do you have extra food and water caches stored in secure locations other than your house? Do you have guns and ammunition in those places? Do you extra stores of gasoline, multiple vehicles, accounts in overseas banks, private security, razor wire, and thousands of dollars in ready cash? No? Then you, my friend, are unprepared for the Bush administration’s grand utopian vision.

Sure, you thought it was about Christian conservatism. You thought they were going to fight against abortion or gay marriage, or defend your right to own guns. But that’s just the social agenda. What’s really going on domestically is the grand vision of someone you may have never heard of named Grover Norquist. Grover’s most famous quote is about government, where he said he would like “to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” And drown our government has in the flood waters of Katrina.

But what does that really mean anyway? Isn’t small government a good thing? Certainly anyone who has been in line at the DMV knows that government is a pain in the butt. But can we live without it entirely? Libertarians would like to think so, and their agenda, through people like Grover Norquist, is running this country.

The idea stems from authors like Ayn Rand. Ayn wrote a book titled “Atlas Shrugged” which is the bible of the Libertarianism. It depicts the failure of the American government and the rise of an Objectivist state where each man or woman runs a hyper efficient corporation and blazes their own path to glory unhindered by any form of government.

Having been through Hurricane Andrew and having help in the recovery effort I find talking with Libertarians a frustrating experience. They wax poetic about a world where there are only corporations, but no sense of how that would impact individuals. In particular their philosophy does not account for those who are infirmed either temporarily or permanently. Those people, who would not survive in the natural order, would simply die. And good riddance. They have no ability to make a positive contribution to society. It’s an ideology that is as cold and brutal as Ayn Rand herself. And it’s now core to the domestic policy of our government.

If you want proof of this you need look no further than Katrina. When asked about the response after the event Bush at first could find no fault in it. The people that could fend for themselves did. Those who could not were left to die in the streets. A fate foretold in books like “Atlas Shrugged” and seen as the natural order by the likes of Grover Norquist. We are governed by a group of people who don’t believe in government.

Ironically I doubt that Ayn would approve of the methods of those, like Grover, who pay allegiance to her ideals. Instead the complete destruction of government they simply starve essential government service and let them die on the vine. Leaving an entity that looks and sounds like government but which is in fact as impotent and inept. And woe betide those who are unaware of this and are unprepared. They will be the next to die in the streets.

Thankfully the American people rose to the occasion as we always do. We donated, we volunteered, we rescued, and we let the Bush administration know that the least fortunate among us were still Americans and should never be left for dead. The unholy union of the fiscal conservative or Libertarian ideology and Christian conservative movement has fallen victim to Katrina. It’s was an untenable marriage from the beginning as anyone who asked the question “If there is no government who would enforce a ban on abortions?” would know. But now this disaster has brought this ideological fissure into stark relief. Jesus helped the poor. He didn’t write off those who couldn’t fend for themselves as the worthless products of the Clinton welfare state that right wing pundits would have you believe.

But it’s not enough, was it? Even with the non-governmental charity people still starved and died when they could have been saved by the resources of the federal government. Now I realize that government is not a panacea. Nor should it be. But the government has a role in these disasters given the current setup of our local, state and federal government. And if the federal government wants to shirk that responsibility then there needs to be a viable alternative in place before it can do that. Otherwise you end up with the result we had with Katrina. And that, in the words of Mr. Bush, is unacceptable.

It’s time to turn our backs on these grand ideological notions of zero government. They are completely unrealistic and passive aggressive explorations in their implementation lead only to the unnecessary shameful carnage we have seen in the last few weeks. We are not a nation of self-serving individual survivalists. At our best we are a society that works together for the betterment of all. We all deserve a government that typifies us at our very best. A government that is an extension of the rich American community that works together to protect and better itself.