The Proverbial Nail

The Financial Times (subscription-only) hits the nail smack dab on the head. This entire catastrophe is a visual representation--with all attendant disastrous consequences--of how an America governed by"conservative" principles responds to a crisis that cannot be addressed by military aggression.

For the past quarter century in Washington, since the Republican Ronald Reagan rode a conservative backlash all the way to the presidency, US politics has been dominated by the conviction that what was wrong with America would be solved by getting government off the people's backs. [...]

[...] With the New Deal in the 1930s, helping those who could not help themselves became a mission that spawned a vast expansion of government's role. After a generation of determined effort the conservative movement has succeeded in squelching that mission. In the aftermath of Katrina, its success appears to have come at high cost."