The right wing doesn't get it -- never will....

David Brooks, who represents the conservative viewpoint on the Op-Ed page of the NY Times shows why the days of GOP rule are nearly at an end.

...this illustrates the paradox at the heart of the Katrina disaster, which is that we really need government in times like this, but government is extremely limited in what it can effectively do. Katrina was the most anticipated natural disaster in American history, and still government managed to fail at every level. For the brutal fact is, government tends toward bureaucracy, which means elaborate paper flow but ineffective action. Government depends on planning, but planners can never really anticipate the inevitable complexity of events. And American government is inevitably divided and power is inevitably devolved...

This preparedness plan is government as it really is. It reminds us that canning Michael Brown or appointing some tough response czar will not change the endemic failures at the heart of this institutional collapse. So of course we need limited but energetic government. But liberals who think this disaster is going to set off a progressive revival need to explain how a comprehensive governmental failure is going to restore America's faith in big government.

So Brooks is saying to us that we liberals are miguided fools for thinking we can ever expect more than this recent show of incompetence -- the problem he says is not people like Michael Brown, it is the idea that government can ever do anything we need it to do.

This my friends is the death knell of GOP rule. Because there are jobs America wants government to do, and needs government to do. And we are not about to accept the excuse that it is hard, or the argument that it is impossible.

Let us hope that Americans reject this defeatist nonsense and send the GOP packing. It is time for a change. We cannot afford "more of the same".

| +Save/Share | |