Of course, even those people who are conservatives have a latent progressive worldview in their minds, which means that they are open to the possibility of being offended by a meager and incompetent governmental response when their fellow citizens are suffering so greatly. The Pew report Jerome talks about below shows that this is in fact happening for a significant number of conservatives (see page four of this link--PDF). Katrina and the relief failure is causing a crisis in worldview for many conservatives, as they are now growing convinced that a massive public response, rather than just a private response, is needed in the wake of this disaster. Ultimately, it is this line of attack that Democrats need to adopt, for it was the failure of the conservative worldview, a belief that the only common good is the sum of individual goods, that led to poor preparation before the disaster, and a general failure of governmental relief efforts after the disaster. This includes "playing the blame game," because progressives believe that the government is obligated to serve the public good through effective preparations for and responses to situations like this. When there are ineffective responses, the cause must be discovered and rooted out. Unless we can place blame, we cannot hope to avoid future prepaation and response failures.
On this subject, I recently received the following email from George Lakoff:
The cause was political through and through -- a matter of values and principles. The progressive-liberal values are America's values, and we need to go back to them.
The heart of progressive-liberal values is simple: empathy (caring about and for people) and responsibility (acting responsibly on that empathy). These values translate into a simple principle: Use the common wealth for the common good to better all our lives. In short, promoting the common good is the central role of government.
The right-wing conservatives now in power have the opposite values and principles. Their main value is Rely on individual discipline and initiative. The central principle: Government has no useful role. The only common good is the sum of individual goods.
It's the difference between We're-all-in-this-together and You're-on-your-own-buddy.
It's the difference between Every citizen is entitled to protection and You're only entitled to what you can afford.
It's the difference between connection and separation.
It is this difference in moral and political philosophy that lies behind the tragedy The heart of progressive-liberal values is simple: empathy (caring about and for people) and responsibility (acting responsibly on that empathy). These values translate into a simple principle: Use the common wealth for the common good to better all our lives. In short, promoting the common good is the central role of government.
The right-wing conservatives now in power have the opposite values and principles. Their main value is Rely on individual discipline and initiative. The central principle: Government has no useful role. The only common good is the sum of individual goods.
It's the difference between We're-all-in-this-together and You're-on-your-own-buddy.
It's the difference between Every citizen is entitled to protection and You're only entitled to what you can afford.
It's the difference between connection and separation.
It is this difference in moral and political philosophy that lies behind the tragedy of Katrina.
It is a truth that needs to be told starting now - over and over. There can be no delay. The Bush administration is busy framing it in it's own way: bad things just happen, it's no one's fault; the federal government did the best it could -- the problem was at the state and local level; we'll rebuild and everything will be okay; the people being shipped out will have better lives elsewhere, and jobs in WalMart! Unless the real truth is told starting now, the American people will accept it for lack of an alternative.
Mrs. Clinton, in back-to-back television interviews Wednesday morning, angrily dismissed those kinds of attacks as a diversion from legitimate attempts by critics to point up shortcomings.
"That's what they always do; I've been living with that kind of rhetoric for the last four and a half years," Mrs. Clinton, Democrat of New York, said on the "Today" show. "It's time to end it. It's time to actually show this government can be competent."
"Americans should now harbor no illusions about the government's ability to respond effectively to disasters," she said. "Our vulnerabilities were laid bare."
Former Senator John Edwards, a likely candidate for president in 2008 and the Democratic Party's vice-presidential nominee in 2004, argued that the breakdown in New Orleans illustrated the central theme of his national campaigns: the nation has been severed into two Americas.
"The truth is the people who suffer the most from Katrina are the very people who suffer the most every day," Mr. Edwards said in a speech in North Carolina on Wednesday, according to a transcript provided by his office.
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