# Beyond immediate politics Katrina may be a boon to conservatives philosophically **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 5, 2005, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beyond-immediate-politics-katrina-may-be-a-boon-to-conservatives-philosophically/320196 "2005-09-05T13:52:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2005, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beyond-immediate-politics-katrina-may-be-a-boon-to-conservatives-philosophically/320196/21 "2005-09-05T23:12:15Z")
Well, liberals don’t care about George Will’s opinions. And, apparently, Washington conservative don’t care, either; or at least nowhere near as much as they do about TV preachers’ opinions. Face it: Intellectual Conservatives are as disconnected from the Republican leadership as liberals are. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2005, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beyond-immediate-politics-katrina-may-be-a-boon-to-conservatives-philosophically/320196/22 "2005-09-06T00:45:20Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Arguable, but irrelevant. The premise of the OP is that Hurricane Katrina “may be a boon to conservatives philosophically.” The spectacle of looters and snipers might serve to illustrate the authoritarian side of Hobbes’ philosophy, that government is necessary to keep order and defend individual life, liberty and property; but it does nothing at all to strengthen the limited-government side of that philosophy, the view that government is necessary **only** to keep order, etc. Well, I wasn’t arguing the premise in the OP. I was specifically arguing about the interpretation of _Leviathan_ above. **Wesley Clark** : It’s funny that your argument against my points is that they are ‘conjecture’. OF COURSE they are. The entire argument is a hypothetical! When you say something like, “There’s no way libertarianism could have worked here”, then you open yourself up to examples of how a libertarian society might have dealth with this. To dismiss them as ‘conjecture’ is pointless. Rather, you need to explain, with counter-examples or logic, why my examples are flawed. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2005, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beyond-immediate-politics-katrina-may-be-a-boon-to-conservatives-philosophically/320196/23 "2005-09-06T01:37:46Z")
> [@Wesley Clark](#): > > No, in my experience libertarians have a philosophy that gov is incompetent and private orgs are competent and they base their opinions on assumptions like ‘people are totally rational and totally in charge of their lives’. Your experience (or your interpretation of it) is incorrect. As I’m sure you know, liberterians take the name of that philosophy from the latin word for freedom. Libertarians start with the assumptiont that freedom is an end in itself, and the sole purpose of government is to secure freedom for it’s citizens. There certainly is an argument to be made that government agencies tend to be ineficient, but that’s not central to the libertarian idea. Nor do libertarians assume that people are always rational. You are criticizing a strawman explanation of libertarian ideas, I’m afraid. You might want to read up on what Libertarianism is actually about if you are going to discuss it on this board. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2005, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beyond-immediate-politics-katrina-may-be-a-boon-to-conservatives-philosophically/320196/24 "2005-09-06T02:05:29Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > 1. In a libertarian country, the levees might have been maintained by private companies instead of a patchwork quilt of political districts fighting turf wars among each other. And given the potential liability cost of a levee break, they probably would have had liability insurance. And the company underwriting the liability insurance would have had a hell of a lot more incentive to make sure the levees were engineered correctly than some political stooge. > > 2. In a libertarian country, other mechanisms for aiding disaster relief might have arisen. Perhaps we’d have a huge private company that specializes in disaster rescue and relief that would contract to cities for their protection. It’s hard to say what mechanism we might have, because the presence of the federal government has prevented alternatives from being contemplated. #5- why on earth would a private company build the levees? How could they possibly make a profit? Who would they charge? Just like the classic example, who builds the lighthouses in Libertaria? Who would build Fifth Avenue in New York? #6- pie in the sky. Sure, a private company could contract out disaster relief. But a disaster the scope of Katrina would bankrupt it in hours. Once the company is bankrupted, who steps in? There is not now, has never been, and never will be a libertarian nation on the face of the earth. Just why do you suppose that is? ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2005, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beyond-immediate-politics-katrina-may-be-a-boon-to-conservatives-philosophically/320196/25 "2005-09-06T02:11:27Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > Well, I wasn’t arguing the premise in the OP. I was specifically arguing about the interpretation of _Leviathan_ above. > > **Wesley Clark** : It’s funny that your argument against my points is that they are ‘conjecture’. OF COURSE they are. The entire argument is a hypothetical! When you say something like, “There’s no way libertarianism could have worked here”, then you open yourself up to examples of how a libertarian society might have dealth with this. To dismiss them as ‘conjecture’ is pointless. Rather, you need to explain, with counter-examples or logic, why my examples are flawed. I have. Libertarianism is pro privitization, privitization favors profit, and only the wealthy can offer profit and profit does not necessarily equal good short or long term planning. My personal belief is that since many of those who got it the worst in NO were poor that things would be worse under libertarianism and privitization. Also I do not know libertarian perspectives on the environment, but global warming may have made Katrina worse. Also, the example I posted earlier about John Stossel is an example of gov. intervention. If people get cheap flood insurance they don’t need FEMA help, this saves money. If there was no FEMA help it may cost even more, so inefficiencies keep raising the costs. The only way I think libertarian views would’ve helped is if the companies that provided flood insurance to the NO area had a voice in building levees and river walls to prevent floods as floods would’ve cost them billions. Had they had a voice they might have done more to encourage levees to be built. ---
**Author:** ![Ms2001](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ms2001/32/18463_2.png) [@Ms2001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms2001)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2005, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beyond-immediate-politics-katrina-may-be-a-boon-to-conservatives-philosophically/320196/26 "2005-09-06T02:17:06Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > 1. In a libertarian country, other mechanisms for aiding disaster relief might have arisen. Perhaps we’d have a huge private company that specializes in disaster rescue and relief that would contract to cities for their protection. It’s hard to say what mechanism we might have, because the presence of the federal government has prevented alternatives from being contemplated. Not a private company like [this one](http://leninology.blogspot.com/2005/09/politics-of-weather-3-shyness-of.html), I hope. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2005, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beyond-immediate-politics-katrina-may-be-a-boon-to-conservatives-philosophically/320196/27 "2005-09-06T23:45:38Z")
The pharmaceutical analogy still holds as an example of assuming libertarianism and the pro-profit privitization it creates is a better way of life. Companies create unnecessary 4th and 5th treatments for baldness or switch an atom in a molecule of prozac to put it back on patent for wealthy western countries while millions of poor people are dying from preventable diseases. Since the poor were hit hardest I tend to think in libertarianism that things would be even worse. The wealthy and upper middle class areas probably would’ve been fine if flood insurance companies built the levees, but the poor can’t afford flood insurance and/or their claims would be minor so building levees to protect them would’ve been largely unimportant to a for profit company. Only those who can offer profit get help, and the poor largely can’t do that. Either they can’t afford flood insurance, or they’d buy crappy flood insurance so no effort to protect them would’ve been made. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2005, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beyond-immediate-politics-katrina-may-be-a-boon-to-conservatives-philosophically/320196/28 "2005-09-07T00:03:15Z")
Actually, after seeing some of the questions that are being asked in other threads around here (e.g., “Was the NO disaster caused by ‘welfare state’ attitudes?” “Do _Bell Curve_ racial differences in intelligence exist? If so, what does that imply for the NO disaster?”), I’m starting to think that Katrina’s main effect on conservative philosophy will be to make anti-black/anti-poor rhetoric temporarily respectable again. Bleah. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2005, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beyond-immediate-politics-katrina-may-be-a-boon-to-conservatives-philosophically/320196/29 "2005-09-07T00:23:53Z")
I think when people reflect on who bears the blame for the shortcomings of the recovery effort, they will be thinking less like George Will, and more like Winston Churchill: > [@](#): > > \*\* “The responsibility [of government] for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate. It is in fact, the prime object for which governments come into existence.” \*\* Harry Truman said it better: > [@](#): > > **"The buck stops here."** Any attempt to spin responsibility away from the White House is whistling past the graveyard, and I don’t think it will fly. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Cheatem\_Undhow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/13edae/32.png) [@Dewey\_Cheatem\_Undhow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Cheatem_Undhow)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2005, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beyond-immediate-politics-katrina-may-be-a-boon-to-conservatives-philosophically/320196/30 "2005-09-07T00:58:19Z")
> [@Wesley Clark](#): > > Libertarianism is pro privitization, privitization favors profit, and only the wealthy can offer profit and profit does not necessarily equal good short or long term planning. Only the wealthy can offer profit? Gee, I guess that’s why Wal-Mart is such a success – their relentless drive to cater to the limousine set. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2005, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beyond-immediate-politics-katrina-may-be-a-boon-to-conservatives-philosophically/320196/31 "2005-09-07T01:06:05Z")
> [@Dewey Cheatem Undhow](#): > > Only the wealthy can offer profit? Gee, I guess that’s why Wal-Mart is such a success – their relentless drive to cater to the limousine set. Flood insurance is very expensive, and I doubt the poor in New orleans could’ve afforded it. So I don’t see why for profit companies would care about what happened to them anymore than pharmacetical companies care about malaria. Walmart caters to several economic classes, not just the poor so that is not a good example because by ‘wealthy’ I do not mean millionaires, I just mean people above a certain limit (maybe household incomes of 30k or so). When my brother & his wife made 20k a year they shopped at walmart and when they made 100k a year they shopped there. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2005, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beyond-immediate-politics-katrina-may-be-a-boon-to-conservatives-philosophically/320196/32 "2005-09-07T05:20:02Z")
> [@Fear Itself](#): > > Any attempt to spin responsibility away from the White House is whistling past the graveyard, and I don’t think it will fly. It’s worked for them in the past; why not now? ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2005, 9:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beyond-immediate-politics-katrina-may-be-a-boon-to-conservatives-philosophically/320196/33 "2005-09-07T09:31:30Z")
Are the [CIA](http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1153513,00.html) classed as “conservative”? Whether they are or not, it would appear that extreme climate events merely serve up a new load of enemies for conservatives to advantageously demonise, and the electorate will fall for it yet again in 2009. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2005, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beyond-immediate-politics-katrina-may-be-a-boon-to-conservatives-philosophically/320196/34 "2005-09-07T12:26:46Z")
> [@rjung](#): > > It’s worked for them in the past; why not now? I don’t think the public will stand for it. With 9/11 I didn’t really care that the gov. tried to avoid any/all responsibility. But with this we had tons of warnings about the levees breaking, and FEMA’s management was grossly incompetent and FEMA is headed by a crony with no real world experience. I will be enraged if the bush admin tries to avoid any/all responsibility for this and just gives medals to everyone. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2005, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beyond-immediate-politics-katrina-may-be-a-boon-to-conservatives-philosophically/320196/35 "2005-09-08T00:25:46Z")
> [@George Will](#): > > So Katrina has provided a teaching moment. This is a liberal hour in that it illustrates the indispensability, and dignity, of the public sector. It also is a conservative hour, dramatizing the prudence of pessimism, and the fact that the first business of government, on which everything depends, is security That may be true in the broader meaning of liberalism and conservatism. However, roles have reversed between the two parties in my lifetime with respect to prudence and pessimism. For a generation, the Democratic party has been the party to support if you want somebody in charge who’s aware that things can go wrong, and wants to be ready just in case; and the GOP is the party of massive riverboat gambles, like the Reagan and Bush II tax cuts, the war in Iraq, and the failure to do anything serious about gasoline conservation. And on an ongoing basis, the Dem party is the party of spending those comparatively small amounts of money to deal with problems before they get big; the GOP is the party of cutting spending where they can’t ladle serious contracts to their donors. I’ve always wanted a government that was prudent and pessimistic; that’s why I left the GOP in 1980, and it’s why I became a Dem during the Clinton years. > [@Sam Stone](#): > > Not one of Will’s better articles. It meanders all over the place, his points are vague, and his conclusion isn’t really supported by his own statements. How does that differ from a typical Will column? The guy’s been coasting on reputation for a couple of decades. Can someone take both Broder and Will out behind the barn and shoot them? It seems to be what one needs to do to retire an incompetent columnist from the nation’s editorial pages. It’s like they’ve got tenure or something. > [@](#): > > As far as I can tell, the main political effect of Katrina is that politics are about to get a lot uglier. That’s gonna be awfully difficult. The GOP slime machine has set an exceedingly high standard in recent years. Can you say “Swift Boat”? ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2005, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beyond-immediate-politics-katrina-may-be-a-boon-to-conservatives-philosophically/320196/36 "2005-09-08T02:34:14Z")
Well, I agree that Will has been coasting on his rep for a long time. No doubt. But this bit: > [@](#): > > Politics is a distinctively human activity, but it arises from something not distinctively human—from anxiety about security, and fear of violent death. On the firm foundation of this brute fact, Thomas Hobbes erected a political philosophy that last week reacquired urgent pertinence. Urgh. It’s always been my impression that politics arises from the desire to control the actions of others. It’s the interaction of competing standards of behavior that most players wish to impose on others. Dress is up as ‘security’ or ‘social norms’ or ‘fairness’ or whatever…in the end it’s about controlling others. That’s the dirty secret of the political process. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2005, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beyond-immediate-politics-katrina-may-be-a-boon-to-conservatives-philosophically/320196/37 "2005-09-09T07:45:40Z")
> [@](#): > > Thoughtful conservatives—meaning those whose conservatism arises from reflections deeper than an aversion to high marginal tax rates—are conservative because they understand how thin and perishable is the crust of civilization, and hence how always near society’s surface are the molten passions that must be checked by force when they cannot be tamed by socialization The news that the crust of civilization is thin and perishable is really going to terrorize the generations that I’ve taught that have lived in the projects or friends that live from paycheck to paycheck. ---
**Author:** ![Capt\_B.Phart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9fc29f/32.png) [@Capt\_B.Phart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt_B.Phart)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2005, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beyond-immediate-politics-katrina-may-be-a-boon-to-conservatives-philosophically/320196/38 "2005-09-10T22:25:28Z")
> [@](#): > > …are conservative because they understand how thin and perishable is the crust of civilization… [The Lefties at the Guardian](http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5280443-103390,00.html) seem to understand the exact same thing > [@](#): > > Katrina’s big lesson is that the crust of civilisation on which we tread is always wafer thin. One tremor, and you’ve fallen through, scratching and gouging for your life like a wild dog…[blah.blah]… Hobbesian…[blah,blah]… The Big Easy shows us the Big Difficult, which is to preserve that crust. The recognition that the veneer of civilisation is thin is not unique to left or right - the arguments about who has the best method of preserving it are not new. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beyond-immediate-politics-katrina-may-be-a-boon-to-conservatives-philosophically/320196.md?page=1)