From West by Northwest.org Voices of the Northwest Sadler's Sense: The Thin Veneer By Russell Sadler Sep 9, 2005 The failure of government to act competently in the wake of Katrina is the predictable result of an attitude toward government. The attempt to determine accountability for the "unacceptable" government response to Hurricane Katrina is hampered by an artful "blame game." Who failed to react competently -- state and local governments or the federal government? This is a non-issue, deliberately manufactured to shield the real culprit. In the Deep South, this attitude -- it should not be dignified by calling at philosophy -- has been around since the Civil War. It is fostered by a suffocatingly paternal plantation-owner mindset of the aristocracy and the primitive sharecropper economy it creates to maintain a large, low-wage, docile, disposable workforce. This attitude toward government is characterized by governing on the cheap. Hapless Mississippi is at the bottom of the list in nearly everything society measures that counts -- education spending, literacy, economic health measures. Mississippi's political and social leaders are content with this status. Louisiana is not far above Mississippi in those statistics because it's statewide leaders have the same attitude. This indifference, even hostility, to the public realm has a code name in the South. It is called "personal responsibility." That label really means "You're on your own if disaster strikes. Government has no responsibility for helping you. God and the church will provide voluntary help." This Southern attitude began to aggressively spread across the country when Ronald Reagan campaigned on the slogan "Government is the problem, not the solution." Reagan demanded that welfare be limited to the "truly needy." His purge of the welfare roles created the largest population of the permanently homeless since The Great Depression. Southern hostility to the legitimacy of the public realm grew a hard Libertarian edge in its most recent incarnation. The right-wing apparachik Grover Norquist of Americans For Tax Reform, infamously said, ""I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." Be careful what you wish for Grover. You may get it. For more than 20 years we have had a "discussion" about the size and scope of government. The right says it's too big, the left says it's fine the way it was. The majority of those in between think government is too large until until a program they depend on is cut or eliminate or there is inadequate response to a disaster. The disagreement cannot be reconciled, because no consensus exists about the "legitimate" size and scope of government. It is clear from Katrina that government at all levels was inadequate to cope with a predictable event of this magnitude. It raises the question of the country's preparedness for a widespread terrorist attack with biological or nuclear weapons. It is not a question of blame. It is a question of accountability for an "unacceptable" response -- that is President Bush's judgment, not this columnist. It is clear that FEMA is run by incompetent political appointees chosen by the President. The Bush administration has already throwing the low-level suspects overboard. It is clear that Congress and the Bush administration shifted FEMA's natural disaster preparedness funds and personnel to more fashionable antiterrorist activities when FEMA was downgraded from a cabinet status agency and folded into the ill-conceived Department of Homeland Security. That looting of money and personnel predictably left FEMA an enfeebled organization unable to meet its primary mission. State and local emergency response organizations also suffered from this shift of federal funds from disaster preparedness and response to antiterrorist activities. Nor can Oregon stand smugly on the sidelines and tut-tut over Southern state incompetence. Last winter's tsunami warning on the West Coast witnessed too many people who did not know what to do or when and where to go. Fortunately, the tsunami did not materialize. The Oregon Legislature came and went without seriously looking into the inadequate response to the warning. I am reliably informed by emergency response personnel that current budgets are inadequate to deal with a tsunami on the coast or a major earthquake inland. The "Southern attitude" has taken root in Salem in the last two decades. In other words, it could happen here. The lesson of Katrina is that you cannot put government in the hands of people who express contempt for government and expect government to function competently. As Katrina's aftermath demonstrated, that contempt can turn lethal. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., the distinguished American jurist, famously observed, "Taxes are what we pay for civilized society." After Katrina struck, American stared into the abyss while the whole world watched -- and saw how thin the veneer of civilized society really is. No one can say, "It can't happen here." It did. And American was not up to the job. We embarrassed ourselves in the eyes of the world. The Gulf states will not be the only things that will take a long time to recover. And what of Grover Norquist? Grover is over. His reputation and hopefully his ideological influence drowned in a bathtub that was once the great city of New Orleans. You still get what you pay for. Copyright ©2005 by Russell Sadler Russell Sadler is a journalist and a lecturer at Southern Oregon University. You may write him c/o publisher at westbynorthwest.org. Visit Sadler's Sense column's at West By Northwest.org: Sadler's Sense: Gas Policy After Katrina-- Oregon Can Lead the Way Again Sadler's Sense: Oregon's Supreme Court Take on "Takings" Flies on Eagle Wings Sadler's Sense: Legislature's Sandbox Politics Irresponsible Sadler's Sense: Beyond Dorchester - Can Our Traditional Parties Stand for Anything Substantive? Sadler's Sense: The Oregon Gasoline Tax, Pork Barrel Projects and Big Brother Sadler's Sense: A Classic Conservative Judge Who Conserves the Law Sadler's Sense: On the Economic Ramparts--The Northwest, Defazio and CAFTA Sadler's Sense: Can Dissatisfaction Become a Wave for Political Sanity? Sadler's Sense: Oregon's Public Lands Patrimony in Danger Once Again Sadler's Sense: Driving a Road to State Religion? 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