The Levee will break

[malaise]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/story/0,16441,1564223,00.html
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What of America itself? Since the country's founding, the US has oscillated between international engagement and isolationism. Sometimes it wants to look outward, sometimes in. The hurricane may well put Americans in the latter mood. As they look at pictures of US troops toiling away in Iraq, many will surely think: what the hell are we doing there, when we have so much work to do right here at home?

Adrian Wooldridge, co-author with John Micklethwait of an excellent study of conservative America, The Right Nation, anticipates just such a sentiment. "The big losers among Republicans will be the neocons," he says. "The hubris of thinking America could reshape the world, creating a democracy in hostile territory, when it can't even keep order in an American city - that hubris has just been punctured in a big way." Now it will be images of Katrina which are foremost in the public mind, replacing the four-year-old memories of 9/11. The "global war on terror" could well lose its place as the all-consuming, number-one priority.

Indeed, all previous assumptions are now up for grabs. Since Ronald Reagan's election in 1980, conservatives have won the argument for a shrunken state, one that taxes and spends less. That neoliberal model - with its emphasis on privatisation and deregulation - has spread across the world, often imposed on countries that did not want it. It continues to split the European Union, with France and others insisting that their own social model is superior.

Katrina has reopened that debate in neoliberalism's motherland. Suddenly progressive Americans detect an opening, a chance to speak up for active government, even for taxing and spending. The hurricane has made their case immediate and simple: you can only neglect the public realm for so long. Do so for a generation and the levees will break - and an entire city will be washed away.

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You can only neglect the public realm for so long. That was my view of the neo-liberal model in 1979/80. In other parts of the world we have all the empirical evidence we need. Now Americans have their data. Sad, but if neo-liberalism is buried in New Orleans, then the sacrifices of the poor of New Orleans and Mississippi will save our planet.