But that's very typical of the liberal world-view; that the government is supposed to save us from poverty, sickness, natural disaster, and irresponsibility. It would be excellent if the government could help society overcome those things, but to EMPOWER the government with all responsibility for them is undemocratic, strips citizens of their rights, and breeds welfare state mentality.

Not more, better.

Good post!

The issue here isn't small vs. large government; it's competent vs. incompetent government.

The federal response to Katrina wasn't a failure because government is big and should be smaller. It appears to have been a failure because the people in charge of the coordination (Mike Brown and his senior staff) were a bunch of incompetent hacks who didn't know what the eff they were doing. They didn't have qualifications; they had connections. They were campaign staff, old-boy buddies, etc.

A lot of righties are as anxious to make political hay out of this as lefties are; in the right's case, the argument goes, "See? Government doesn't work! It's still to big! It must be even SMALLER!"

But a far more logical response is, government agencies, regardless of their size, don't work when they are run by clueless clowns.

And in fact, even if we accept the small-and-limited government theory (as is certainly reasonable), that just raises the bar -- the less government you have, the more important it is to have people who are competent in place. There's no room for waste or padding.

And that's what FEMA was used for. Anyone who defends Bush's ideologies must still account for his failure, in this case, to put qualified people in place.

That failure cost lives. Not "big government."

beetroot:

"Anyone who defends Bush's ideologies must still account for his failure, in this case, to put qualified people in place."

I don't disagree with that, but couldn't you just have easily have said:

"Anyone who defends democracy must still account for its failure, in this case, to put qualified people in place as Governor of Louisiana and Mayor of New Orleans."?

I do, however, disagree with your assertion that "the less government you have, the more important it is to have people who are competent in place".

That is only true if you are decreasing government and not replacing it with something else, e.g. a privatized alternative, and redistributing the burden.

Karol:

"Personally, I couldn't believe that anyone could look at the failures at every level of government and think 'yes, we need more of this.'"

So did you look at 9/11 and think "the last thing we need is more funding for the CIA, FBI, INS, military intelligence, et al.?

To use a sports analogy: the Knicks suck. The reason why they suck is not because they have 12 guys on their roster, instead of a more-streamlined 9 or a deeper bench of 15. The reason why they play like garbage is due to the wrong *quality* of player, not the wrong *quantity*.

Joe, I certainly didn't think that growing those agencies or doing bureaucratic reshuffling or combining of those agencies. 12 players versus millions of employees that it's already hard to keep a handle on is a big difference.