Interesting article. I have a couple thoughts.

First, Lakoff was rather dishonestly posturing about John Roberts when he says: "Anti-discrimination legislation is also based on the Interstate Commerce Clause. What about discrimination wholly within one state? Were Roberts to apply a similar narrowing criterion, much of anti-discrimination law would go out the window." In fact, the anti-discrimination law that I'm familiar with is based instead upon the 14th amendment (the 'equal protection' clause) which states: "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States ... nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

I was pleased that he correctly characterized us conservatives as desiring to rely on individual initiative instead of wanting to rely on the government. To me its more clear than ever that one simply CANNOT rely on the goverment for protection. The story of the dude whose nursing-home-bound mom drowned over 4 days while waiting for the government to come was heartwrenching. I was soggy-eyed. But I tell you what -- if MY mom called me and told me she was stuck and the water was rising, I'd go loot me a walmart (er borrow, since I'm white), grab something that floats, and go try to get her myself. I wouldn't be able to live with myself otherwise.

I disagree with the assertion that conservatives think that government "has no useful role" (As an aside: Haliburton thinks it has a useful role). Many of us simply think that government by its very nature is wasteful, that its capacity for harm is much greater than its capacity for good, and as such its size and responsibility should be limited. There's no reason why empathy and conservatism need be mutually exclusive. It just shifts the responsibility for acting responsibly to the individual from the government. I was inspired by the story of a neighborhood that responded to the lawlessness by banding together, posting guards (with guns! yay guns!) and looking out for each other in the face of a total failure of government. These people took the initiative to protect themselves, not in a you're-on-your-own way but in a we're-all-in-this-together way.

In the rare occasion when government works and the helpless are helped, that's great. But the nature of government is bureaucracy, and woe unto you if your life depends on a brand-new huge bureaucracy like the one created by the Dept of Homeland Security.

the poorest don't have guns...unfortunatelly they don't have tools (intelectually or other) to help themselves.

We pay taxes, and frankly I hate my money is going out to Iraq instead of saving the lives of the poorest American kids that die every day without food or vaccinations.

I am a pro abortion and believe Bush and his crowd and the antiabortion ones are just liers...they made a whole deal out an abortion but they don't adress the real American problem, here more babies die of hunger and illness than in many third world countries...how great america is....American loved to be held as a model well they are not model to me, I think conservatiscim sucks and people that practise it although well meaning they just want to have more and do not care about the needest like children and they are American children.

This topic is a taboo for everybody in this country and frankly, it is simple something well off americans and middle class, the Bush base do not want to hear about.

I came from a third world country. Right now America is not much different than my own land. Sad, sad, sad.

Bush Zen...

If neglected citizens bodies aren't seen then it didn't happen!

Must not arouse the peasants! Go shop at the mall... all is well, go to sleep!

U.S. agency blocks photos of New Orleans dead 07 Sep 2005 00:56:29 GMT Source: Reuters

NEW ORLEANS, Sept 6 (Reuters) - The U.S. government agency leading the rescue efforts after Hurricane Katrina said on Tuesday it does not want the news media to take photographs of the dead as they are recovered from the flooded New Orleans area.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, heavily criticized for its slow response to the devastation caused by the hurricane, rejected requests from journalists to accompany rescue boats as they went out to search for storm victims.

An agency spokeswoman said space was needed on the rescue boats and that "the recovery of the victims is being treated with dignity and the utmost respect."

"We have requested that no photographs of the deceased be made by the media," the spokeswoman said in an e-mailed response to a Reuters inquiry.

The Bush administration also has prevented the news media from photographing flag-draped caskets of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, which has sparked criticism that the government is trying to block images that put the war in a bad light.

The White House is under fire for its handling of the relief effort, which many officials have charged was slow and bureacratic, contributing to the death and mayhem in New Orleans after the storm struck on Aug. 29. (Additional reporting by Deborah Charles)

The Cold Man and the Sea.

Man I never thought I'd say this, but thank god for Oprah. She's doing two days of shows on this, actually going inside places like the Superdome with a video camera and bringing these 'forbidden' pictures right to the living rooms of comfortable, suburban America.

I can't quite comprehend how the government can forbid the media to broadcast anything like this. How is it that we heard every sordid detail of the cigar and Monica Lewinsky's vertical smile, but a body that resulted directly from the neo-Conservative 'I got mine, fuck you' mindset is taboo?

In responce to the first comment, I feel the need to remind the poster that we are in a conservative goverment now and have been so for a while. The government response which was seen in regards to Katrina was a conservative response, not a progressive one and should be judged as such.

I personally see this situation as an example of what occurs when a society intentionally hinders its government. I cite as an example, the drastic reduction of federal funding for the restructuring of the levee system in New Orleans by the conservative federal administration in the recent past. I do not know what the conservative government's hope in that situation was. Perhaps that a few wealthy individuals would take on the project on their own? That is laughable because you see there is no guarenteed mechanism for financial profit.

Mike: Lakoff does paint with a very broad brush in his description of liberals and conservatives, I think mainly because he believes that the differences betwen various kinds of conservatives and liberals aren't that important since they all boil down to two semi-conscious parental worldviews of politics.

Still, there is a lot of truth to the claim that modern conservatives see no useful role for government and embrace 'you're on your own, buddy' as their credo. Recently David Brooks, the NY Times conservative called Katrina the "anti 9-11" because the first rule in the a disaster is that you help the vulnerable. I guess he didn't get the memo--the conservative line everywhere else was: they had it coming because they didn't take care of themselves.

It may be reasonable to expect people to fend for themselves, by an large, when hit by mild economic misfortune, when born into a poor family, etc. We can debate to what degree the government should get involved in these situations. But public safety? Is it reasonable to expect each individual to protect his or herself and family against roaming gangs, or to expect people in nursing homes, without cars, or simply people who work and could lose their jobs for leaving town, to make judgments about natural disasters and then make arrangements to simply pick up and move (to where, we can only wonder)? No, it's not reasonable. The comfortable and well-off don't have the wherewithal to do that, let alone the weak and vulnerable. Government is the only organization that has the moral authority, disposable resources, and coercive power to stop people from dying in a situation like Katrina.

The woman in the nursing home is a wrenching, frustrating story. I don't know what it proves, since it's only one story about which I don't know all the particulars. If anything, though, it proves not that "Government" in general can't guarantee public saftey and a basic level of order, but rather that OUR government found it impossible to do these things in this case. It doesn't happen to many other governments. There are places in the world where public restrooms are clean, where the highways are virtually free from potholes, and where people aren't left in a Hobbesian state of nature for days on end.

I also applaud the neighbors to grabbed their weapons and stuck together, defending their block. But the reason why that was good was because it represents something approximating the collective pooling of resources for the equal protection of all, not because those people's initiative is an inspiring comparison to the complacency of those who simply expect the government to protect them. The 'neighborhood watch' model of protection is still a poor imitiation of the modern state--I doubt you or I would want to be protected (and ruled) by whoever happened to have guns, or have the most of them. The very fact that our society works (not just for the poor, but for business people as well) is because we never have to worry (or should never have to worry) about the fact that the government is looking after our persons and property. If each person had to "take the initiative" for his or her own safety, commerce and free social intercourse would come to a grinding halt.

Honestly I think it's amazing that the left is actually having to debate about the government's role in this. I think it proves to some extent what Lakoff is saying, that there is a basic ideological difference at work.

Thanks for the response, anon. It is said that we are in a conservative government. Well, allow me to list but a few of the principles that we conservatives hold dear and we can see if we can contrast them to actions taken by the current regime. 1) We favor small federal government with more responsibilities given to the local community government. However, Bush massively increased the number of people working for the government with his whole airport fondler squads and the Dept of Homeland Security. "No child left behind" strips a lot of community responsibility for the education of their children. 2) Along with a small government, we approve of responsible government spending. Bush's failure to veto a single spending bill is astounding. 3) Individual liberty is darned-near all important. But in the interests of making you 'safe' the PATRIOT Act strips a suprising number of civil liberties. 4) We like to be mean to gay people. Okay so Bush is doing fine there, but 1 out of 4 isn't great.

So it seems to me that the folks running the show are conservative in the same way that the Soviets were Communist -- in other words they only talk the talk and don't walk the walk. Instead, I submit that rather than being a real conservative, our president is simply using government to make lots of money for his friends. It has been suggested elsewhere on this site that the money taken from the levee construction fund was given to fund the war in Iraq. Let's assume that's the case. Do you know who profits from money given to the war in Iraq? I'm betting it's a juicy, wasteful contract to Haliburton et al. That looks like a guaranteed mechanism for financial profit to me.

I will grant a bit of truth to what you have said, I will agree with you that we are perhaps more in a fundementalist government than a conservative one.

And as an extra tid-bit, the credibility of which I cannot confirm, I have ran across a few sites which claim that Haliburton holds through a pre-approved contract, a major slice of post-disaster rebuilding.

But, rebuilding has always been more profitable for than prevention for big business.

Did you vote for him Mike?

I wish to add though that your argument that this is not a conservative government is largely semantic as the widest majority of the Republican Party consider themselves to be conservative in comparison to more liberal parties. For most Americans, the words conservative and republican are synonymous.

Dende: Interesting points. I'll have to give it a good think. True I have no wish for rule by They With The Most Guns. I like the idea of a strong local government and I'm suspicious of a powerful, distant federal government. Maybe I should style myself as something other than Conservative. Ronald Reagan once remarked that the he didn't change his political ideas when he changed parties: rather the democratic party had changed and passed him by. So if not conservative, what shall I be? Labels are limiting but I'm open to suggestion. Perhaps I could be a Mikertarian or something.

Norm: I voted for Bush in 2000 but not 2004. Fool me once and all that.

Anon who said: "For most Americans, the words conservative and republican are synonymous." I agree and I think it's sad.

you sound like a Libertarian to me.

Mike: I agree that there is a distinction to be made between true conservatism and the policies of the current administration. I have respect for many conservative thinkers and think that their ideas are important. Many liberals have fallen all over themselves talking about conservatism as something so great which Bush doesn't live up to. Like John Kerry noting that Bush's planning for Iraq wasn't really conservative in the great tradition of conservatism. (I'd really like to hear a major conservative leader say something similar: e.g. "liberalism has a great tradition of equal rights and special concern for the worst off in society, but John Kerry doesn't live up to those ideals". In actual practice conservative leaders spend most of their rhetorical energy trying to make liberalism=Satanism.)

As a person who wants to be fair-minded and who knows many conservatives whom I like to listen to, I want to make a disconnect between the ideas on the one hand and the people and their policies on the other. But still there is the fact that 90% of people who identifed as "conservative Republican" voted for Bush in 2004. That's way more than Reagan, or Nixon ever had. So if you ask actual self-identified conservatives who their man is, they're unequivocal.

There is the old Marxist line that the ruling classes have a ideological story they tell themselves which is different from the true ideology which actually has an effect. For example the bourgeois tells himself that he is a rational calculating utilitarian, but in fact he operates on all kinds of mystical notions about how the economy works, etc.

I'm not much of a Marxist, but you see some similarities in the case of many of today's conservatives. Ostensibly their ideology is libertarian (focused on the free individual and the perservation his or her negative rights), but on many issues it fixates on some enemy (often very abstract) to be overcome. This overcoming isn't temporary or occasional, but is an almost-ritual core of life. Thus disaster relief becomes all about punishing looters or people who refuse to evacuate.

The point is that sometimes ideology really is a sham which systematically conceals its true character. Not only does it not match up with the results, but it also doesn't match up with the underlying motivations and midsets. Lakoff's theoretical approach is to distill the rhetoric down to a worldview or metaphor and then show why that's not a good metaphor or not a good worldview. But there's still the possibility that the rhetoric and metaphor is just a superstructure (not that unreasonable taken on its own) under which a more irrational motivational structure exists.

Mike, in your first posting, when you advocated that the "dude whose nursing-home-bound mom drowned" should have dropped everything and rescued her himself, were you aware that that dude was, in the words of Aaron Broussard's story, "The guy who runs this building I'm in. Emergency management. He's responsible for everything."?

Is this really the sort of "every man for himself (and perhaps his immediate family)" anarchic state to which 'real conservatives' want to see your country descend? Surely the reason this man didn't cut and run, but stayed at his post and worked to save others, was precisely that he (sadly, mistakenly) believed he still lived in a society where he could rely on his government to watch his back?

While acknowledging some need for government, you characterise conservatives as believing it is "wasteful" by its very nature, and suggest that "its size and responsibility should be limited," which, in context, I take to mean "more limited than it is at present". Leaving aside your later--quite accurate--comments about specific areas in which the 'conservative' Bush administration has counter-intuitively bloated your federal government, they certainly succeeded in shrinking some areas. A larger, more "wasteful" government, for example, would not have repeatedly slashed budgets for levee strengthening in favour of foreign wars and tax cuts for the rich, a policy decision which now, 100% foreseeably, will cost your country something of the order of 10 times the savings in cleanup costs alone. There's that little matter of 10,000 human lives of course, and then you get to the issue of actual long-term damage.

Situated at the mouth of the Mississippi is one of the largest and busiest port complexes on the planet. It is not an asset that is relevant only to the state of Louisiana: as a critical path of inbound raw materials and outbound agricultural production it is of vital importance the economy of your entire nation. Physically it appears to have come through the hurricane largely unscathed, but thanks to those actions of the Bush administration that did stay true to 'real' conservative small-federal-government philosophies, the people who staff that port are gone. Their home is now a uninhabitable toxic waste-dump, and will remain so for many more months than anyone is yet willing to publicly speculate. Meanwhile the last stragglers are being compulsorily evacuated to cities like Houston, Texas, and it is only a matter of weeks, perhaps days, before the first implications of the displacement of hundreds of thousands of mainly poor and black internal refugees begin to rumble.

Harvest is coming, and the repercussions of four and a half years of 'real conservative' policy are only just beginning.

It seems to me that this "I've got mine, fuck you" attitude is very prevalent throughout the American community. On various websites I've read many comments by people whining about their tax dollars going to bail these people out.

How absurd! Their own countrymen are dying, and a major US city has been basically destroyed, and they are whining about tax dollars?!!?!?

For me, when I read this, I was dumbfounded. It seems to sum up the American way of life. "every man for himself". Just look at the lack of public health care as an example of this. It is not part of US political philosophy that everybody is in it together, and that even the very poor deserve basic health care.

I hope there really is a major attitude shift in the US, for your own sake.

Hey Mike,

So glad you were raised a poor child in a single-parent family whose mom worked three jobs and came out so great in spite of the flood that destroyed your home! Good luck with tha tmom in the nursing home that thw National Guard won't let you in to save....

I have a few questions. If the progressive liberal values are America's values, then why do conservatives keep winning elections? Why is Bush the ONLY one accountable? I understand he plays a role, but he is not the sole reason the response to Katrina has been less than stellar. Democrats and Republicans alike voted for FEMA to become part of the new Homeland Security Department, making for even more bureaucracy. Why isn't Mayor Nagin accountable for not utilizing 200 school buses to evacuate the city when warned? Why did Governor Blanco need "24 hours" to decide what to do when President Bush gave her 2 options prior to Katrina? Why wasn't the evacuation plan fully utilized? There was a plan to get people out, why didn't it happen? We conservatives want a limited government. This is a perfect example of how big Government can't do everything....If you want to talk about money, why are you limiting the discussion to Iraq? Why aren't you talking about the 6,371 pet projects that were tacked on to the recent transportation bill? By the way, it's up to the Governor of each state to tell the National Guard where to go, NOT the President. This isn't just a "conservative response." Democrats have been running New Orleans and Louisiana for some time now. Check this article out to see what was happening before Bush could be blamed...http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Nation\archive\200509\NAT20050907a.html

I have a few questions. If the progressive liberal values are America's values, then why do conservatives keep winning elections? Why is Bush the ONLY one accountable? I understand he plays a role, but he is not the sole reason the response to Katrina has been less than stellar. Democrats and Republicans alike voted for FEMA to become part of the new Homeland Security Department, making for even more bureaucracy. Why isn't Mayor Nagin accountable for not utilizing 200 school buses to evacuate the city when warned? Why did Governor Blanco need "24 hours" to decide what to do when President Bush gave her 2 options prior to Katrina? Why wasn't the evacuation plan fully utilized? There was a plan to get people out, why didn't it happen? We conservatives want a limited government. This is a perfect example of how big Government can't do everything....If you want to talk about money, why are you limiting the discussion to Iraq? Why aren't you talking about the 6,371 pet projects that were tacked on to the recent transportation bill? By the way, it's up to the Governor of each state to tell the National Guard where to go, NOT the President. This isn't just a "conservative response." Democrats have been running New Orleans and Louisiana for some time now. Check this article out to see what was happening before Bush could be blamed...http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Nation\archive\200509\NAT20050907a.html

i think an aspect of libertarianism that has been missed is a general distrust of the government. i see why it would be nice to give the government progressive powers, but i think im currently leaning towards the opinion that, though it may not be ideal, you really cant trust the government (particularly this administration) that much. in other words, i would prefer problems to be solved, and government seems to be in a reasonable situation to solve them, but i am wary of giving government power.

Donna: Huh?

Dende: Fascinating as usual. Help me see if I understood your points correctly; I'm not sure I comprehended the Marxist line. I don't intend to put words in your mouth here, I'm just trying to see if this is what you meant. What I gathered is that you were saying that there are two parts to an ideology. Let's take good ol' communism as an example. The first part is the 'talk,' the part that people preach, talk about, and the part that sounds reasonable and nice. Things like (in our commie example) the workers should own the means of production and that everyone takes care of everyone else. No more poor, no more class distinction, yay.

Then there's the actual reality that comes from the rhetoric; the 'walk' if you will: slaughter of political dissidents, reeducation camps, and totalitarianism.

The 'walk' never manages to live up to the 'talk,' and the reason for that is not necessarily a bunch of bad people who purposely corrupt the doctrine, but because behind the otherwise reasonable doctrine is an unspoken set of irrational motivations, or an unarticulated worldview. Those motivations consistently result in a series of similar situations (Cuba, Russia, N. Korea, China, Cambodia, N. Viet Nam, etc) not because of any problem with the doctrine, but because of problems with the underlying fears/assumptions/perceptions that the doctrine is based upon. Is that what you're getting at? It's an interesting idea, if so.

Robert S: Point taken. I still dispute that these are the fruits of a 'real conservative' policy. About the dude being in charge of the building: I wasn't aware that he was in charge. At that point he'd have some extremely tough decisions to make. If he saved his mom, somebody else's mom would maybe die; if he saved somebody else's mom then his would die. There's a no-win situation for ya.

I suppose the question is: Where should a person's topmost loyalty lie? I think we can all agree that a person should feel a sense of duty to family, country, society, self, and job. But what should take precedence when you can't do everything you're obligated to do? Tough call.

Mike: Of course (doctrinaire) marxists don't apply the argument to their own "ideology". For them marxism isn't an ideology, is scientific truth. I actually think that it is an ideology and that you might be able to apply the argument to it, but that's beside the point.

Still you've got it pretty correct. Leninism on the one hand pretended that the revolution would be easy because all history was leading to it; but then it embraced a totalitarian mindset which assumed an almost opposite attitude--that to consolidate fully the revolution you need to grind huge numbers of undesirables through a great killing apparatus. Stalin and Mao later embraced this latter view even more fully.

On most days I admit that the problems I have with Bush have little remotely to do with this kind of ideological dualism. Usually I'd guess it's a mixture of incompetence and bad judgment, mixed with Karl Rove's aversion to decency.

Still, there are a variety of ways to view ideologies. Many people who study them take them at face value and decide that they all play an important role in society (e.g. 'conservatives have a point, but so does the left', etc.). But I think that it explains things better sometimes when you ask whether ideology has a pathological, cancerous side to it. That requires going beyond the analysis of the ideas themselves and asking how the ideas actually operate in political life. The way they work isn't as straightforward as many people imagine. A beautiful sculpture can serve as a very good and handy battering ram.