Today at Tech Central Station, is this column by Gregory Scoblete about how Katrina has revealed the failure of government, on all levels, to meet its most basic function.
Instead of building baseball stadiums, or funding agricultural research, or providing a “safety net”, political philosophers have long recognized that the fundamental purpose of government is to protect men and create social order. As Scoblete notes, Thomas Hobbes theorized a social compact in which men surrendered some of their rights to a central authority in exchange for escaping the “state of nature” that would otherwise exist.
This basic compact, rights for security, is one of the bedrock principles animating Western civilization. A government that cannot, at a minimum, keep people reasonably safe from external harm is ultimately illegitimate. This is the state’s raison d’etre. Every other function of government, including education and road building, is subordinate to this fundamental guarantee.
Under part of this compact, the state is supposed to protect us from foreign enemies. Which is why the response to 9/11 and the war on terror has, for the most part, been entirely justified.
Another part of the compact, though, is the part where the government is supposed to protect us from each other, or at least from those elements of society that would threaten our lives and our property. This is where things broke down in New Orleans.
Yet, as Katrina demonstrates, this minimum standard has not, under any reasonable formula, been met. Even allowing for the severity of the disaster in question and the inevitable foul-ups that would follow even the most exquisitely tailored emergency plans, the response from the local, state and federal government was embarrassing and outrageous. Disasters, after all, are the sole province of the Leviathan in both its local and national varieties.
Katrina is really just the most extreme example of how the government is failing in this basic function. Even before the hurricane, there were parts of New Orleans that were not safe for law-abiding citizens. The same is true of almost every major American city in one way or another.
Why is this happening ? Why is the government failing in its most basic function ? As Scoblete points out, part of the problem is that the state is now required to do so many things, that its almost impossible that it can do any one thing competently.
Katrina’s aftermath was, at the end of the day, a testament to just how unmoored the government has become from its fundamental purpose. This unmooring, this failure to properly establish a limited set of priorities and execute them with a high degree of competence springs from two complimentary impulses. As we have channeled the “war of all against all” into constructive political and social outlets, the government has expanded the definition of what “protection” entails. No longer is the Leviathan responsible for our physical security, but our medical security, our retirement security, even our mental health. It’s concerned that we smoke and that we’re too fat.
In other words, the more government tries to do, the less able it is to do the things it exists to do. In today’s world, where disaster can come from the sea or in the form of Islamofascist terror, this is quite a risk to take.
The U.S. can survive, even thrive, without Big Bird and with steroid-juiced baseball players. It cannot long survive with a government that does not appreciate, and execute, its fundamental obligations.
Read the whole thing.
