Noam Scheiber

"What makes the post interesting is that it cuts to 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. But despite efforts by people like Haley Barbour to try to fit Katrina into that rubric (with their preoccupatoin with shooting looters, who have come to occupy the role terrorists played in 9/11), it just doesn't fly. 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."