Robin Kar (Law, Loyola-LA) writes with a nice idea:
Has anyone started using the term 'Pre-Katrina Mindset' to refer to the line of argument that (i) assumes the legitimacy of minimizing the government's capacity and responsibility to act for the common good and (ii) places all responsibility on private individuals to take care of themselves? As we all know, these are two choices (in terms of allocations of responsibility) that a narrow group of people in this country have increasingly pushed on the whole, and with great tenacity, over the last several decades. They have succeeded in large part because they have been able to keep most people less than cognizant of the full consequences of these choices, and even of the fact that these are choices.
In the afterwake of Katrina, I have seen some people trying to refer to these two propositions to *justify* what has happened (or what failed to happen). In doing so, they seem to me to be implicitly recognizing that these two propositions at least partly *explain* what has happened. But the effects themselves will--I think--refute the justificatory force of the assumptions more viscerally and more vividly, and in a way that will be more accessible to more people, than any philosophical or moral or political argumentation could ever do on matters like this.
Still, when well motivated people face an onslaught from the kinds of political forces that are sure to come very soon, they sometimes need something to hold onto in public discussion to preserve their native sense of what is right. People need a firm catch phrase to name their
knowledge, and to maintain their convictions in what they are starting to realize. They need--I think--a trump card, which allows them to just dismiss (i) and (ii), by saying "but that just reveals a pre-Katrina mindset," without more. I wonder if you could use your website to get people talking this way, to arm them for the oncoming spin in the public debate.
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