KATRINA BLOWS AWAY BUSH’S DEFENCES
New Statesman
September 12, 2005
It has been axiomatic in some polite circles, including those on the
British centre left, to sing the praises of the American approach to
enterprise and governance. The freewheeling US market is the example
zealously copied across much of the developed and developing world,
particularly when set against the “over-regulated” and “burdensome”
model of Old Europe. American con-sultants, and others schooled in
the American way, have reaped rich returns for advising Armenians
and Koreans and Estonians on the way ahead. They lecture on how
small government and low taxation provide the key to success and
contentment. Supposedly intelligent thinkers are falling for their
latest wheeze, the flat tax, whose flaws Nick Pearce explains on
page 19.
Hurricane Katrina has shattered the myths. The New Statesman makes this
point not out of schadenfreude or anti-Americanism. After all, the
victims of this horrific act of nature and horrific act of political
and economic neglect were already victims of a way of life that has
run to excess.
Ignore, if you can, issues of morality and equity. Focus purely,
as boardroom executives might suggest, on efficiency. In his essay,
on page 10, Andrew Stephen explains the underlying causes of the New
Orleans disaster. Across the US, the relationship between the private
sector and the public sector (where it exists) is dysfunctional. The
relationship between federal, state and local levels is, as Katrina
has demonstra- ted, confused. For all the talk of deregulation,
monopolistic practices dominate corporate life, from multinationals
to the US department of defence. The greatest restrictive practice
of all, however, has been the extreme ideology that took root under
Ronald Reagan and found its apogee, or nadir, under George W Bush. A
political system that denigrates the role of the public sector
(except the military) will ultimately pay the price, both socially
and economically. The White House saved tens of millions of dollars
by refusing repeated requests for assistance from Louisiana and other
state governments in recent years. Those sums were small in overall
budgetary terms; they will be an equally small fraction of the cost
of rebuilding an area as large as the British mainland. Anarchy and
civil strife make bad long-term economics.
Possibly, just possibly, something good might emerge from the
calamity. For the first time since Bush came to office, the usually
supine US media – which some sections of the British press had
fashionably praised for their “objectivity” – have begun to criticise
the president and his entourage. They have begun to ask those very
questions that we in Europe have never tired of asking. Is the
president not merely ideologically blinkered but incompetent, too?
How much damage is he inflicting on his own people, let alone those
abroad?
Mainstream journalists have even been challenging the extremes of
the US version of the market. Nicholas Kristof showed in the New
York Times that, according to several indices of quality of life and
standards of civilisation, the US lags behind. Infant mortality is
twice as high in Washington, DC as it is in Beijing. Some 1.1 million
more Americans were living in poverty in 2004 than the previous year.
The proportion has risen 17 per cent under Bush. Kristof concludes
that not only were funds for protecting New Orleans diverted towards
Bush’s Iraq debacle, but money earmarked for vaccinations for children
went towards tax cuts for the wealthy.
America is lumbered with one of the most dangerous presidents in its
history. The only consolation from the devastation of the past days
is that, finally, voters in that country may be realising why.
No academies for bigots
When 96 per cent of readers responding to our online vote (page 37)
endorse the proposition that Tony Blair should end his support for
faith schools, it is an indication, to put it no higher, of general
agreement. Few of the arguments put forward by those readers could be
called extreme: religion is a personal matter and not one in which the
state should meddle; tax receipts should not subsidise the promotion
of any religion; children deserve the broadest access possible to
ideas. Further, faith schools may have a tendency to “ghettoise”
communities, and they may teach as fact notions with no foundation
in science or history, without supplying the equipment to evaluate
those notions critically.
The government, which is to announce its plans in the next few
weeks, has already turned its back on these arguments. Though this is
regrettable and baffling, it is also the case that even if ministers
embraced such principles their hands are tied. Subsidised faith
schools have been around for 60 years and more, and to do away with
them would require an upheaval that only overwhelming public demand
would justify. Such demand does not yet exist, however much we might
wish it did. It is also the case that many of the faith schools eager
to join the state system are Muslim schools, and to slam the door
on them now, when Christian and Jewish schools have had public money
for many years, would be an act of religious discrimination.
The pass has been sold, but all principle need not be sacrificed. We
are entitled to insist that toleration and citizenship be taught
well in these schools and that pupils be exposed to ideas beyond the
confines of religious dogma. No pupil taught at state expense, for
example, should be left in ignorance of evolution and its scientific
basis. This government is besotted with Ofsted. Very well, let Ofsted
be deployed with unprecedented vigour to ensure that faith schools,
if they must have our money, are never academies for bigots.