a slow response

I'm still out here. It's been a very busy week and I believe I have a few more like this ahead of me. Rest assured though, I do plan on making sure that this blog does not become a deserted, desolate wasteland.

For the time being, check out this interesting editorial from the New Republic. It speaks to the kind of damage an event like Katrina can do to the appeal of ideological conservatism.

. . .a central dilemma for conservatives, which is that, at the level of worldview, they simply aren't able to accommodate an event like Katrina. They want to be able to say that government's job is basically to defend us against external enemies and criminals, and that short of that it's every man for himself. . .

. . . Yes, looters and armed thugs are now a problem in New Orleans. But, beyond the obvious (i.e., a category 4 hurricane and New Orleans' unfortunate geography/elevation), the reason the city has become such a hell-hole isn't looters; it's that the government wasn't very competent either beforehand or afterward at mitigating the effects of a natural disaster which were clearly possible to mitigate.

Conservatism, on the level of worldview, isn't quite capable of conceding this (though individual conservatives certainly are).