Katrina And Urban Liberalism

Howard Kurtz gives broad WaPo exposure to comments damning "urban liberalism" in the Katrina disaster penned by Joel Kotkin and David Friedman in New Republic:

"If Katrina has laid bare the shortcomings of Bush-style conservatism, it has also exposed problems with contemporary urban liberalism. During the years preceding the hurricane, New Orleans indulged many of the worst tendencies of urban liberal politics--and on the day Katrina made landfall, it was the poorest residents of the city who paid the price. Which is why it can be said that Katrina exposed the failures of not one, but two, political philosophies: a national conservatism unconcerned about urban centers; and an urban liberalism unconcerned about the daily realities of the majority of urban dwellers. The media has largely focused on the former failure. But the latter failure is no less real.

"That the governments of New Orleans and Louisiana, long dominated by Democrats, are corrupt and ineffective is of course widely recognized. But the problems in New Orleans went beyond mere corruption; the city's civic culture and public institutions have, for years, been under siege. Among those public institutions was the criminal justice system: Even as crime rates have fallen throughout the country, the number of violent crimes in New Orleans was rising well before the storm . . .

"While these and other basic needs went unmet, New Orleans politicians, like so many liberal leaders in cities nationwide, focused on an elite-driven agenda designed to create an ephemeral economy rather than a broad-based one. Their lack of proper economic focus allowed what should have been a healthy city to fall largely into poverty and decrepitude."

And just wait until you see what their recovery program looks like.