Great short letter to the editor in the NYTimes today caught my attention:
To the Editor:
David Brooks says liberals “need to explain how a comprehensive governmental failure is going to restore America’s faith in big government.”
Of course it won’t. But it should provoke America’s intolerance of incompetent government.
Such failure is not inevitable; government built the levies, and parts of government were trying to improve them. And bereaucracy is not limited to government; I have seen many documents in private industry that were just as absurd as New Orlean’s emergency preparedness plan.
Rather than attack the idea of government–even while grudgingly admitting its necessity–we must understand which parts of the New Orleans plan worked and which ones didn’t, and why some government agencies were effective while others were useless.
–Bruce Burger, Seattle, Sept. 11, 2005
Very well said.