Progressive Nation

September 8th, 2005

Hit and Miss

As a publication, The New Republic often nails the point that needs to be made about events and issues. But sometimes, they just don’t get it. Look at the magazine’s website today, and you’ll see what I’m talking about. This staff editorial on American exceptionalism after Katrina makes one of the most eloquent cases for big government that I’ve ever read- by rooting it in our fundamental desire for justice, which government can deliver. Then, there’s the stirring conclusion:

One of the most chilling things in New Orleans last week was the extent to which all of us were not represented in the crisis. The some of us who suffered were overwhelmingly poor and black. If you did not see race and class, you were blind. Barbara Bush saw race and class, and expressed race and class, when she visited the Houston Astrodome: “And so many of the people in the arenas here, you know, were underprivileged anyway. So this is working very well for them.” But the people living in the refugee camp on the Astroturf are not underprivileged, they are destitute. The good news is that most Americans did not respond like the overprivileged former first lady. Near and far, they saw race and class and they rushed to help–thereby shaming their government, which is one of the duties of civil society.

TNR also has a tendency to publish articles that miss the point- badly. This subscription-only Robert Satloff column is a prime example of that. It should be evident to anyone who has taken high school civics that democracy doesn’t work when political minorities- even ridiculously crazy ones- are denied basic rights. In America, we continue to protect the First Amendment rights of our original home-grown terrorist organization, the Ku Klux Klan. Why? Because if we didn’t, we’d be letting the terrorists undermine our way of life.

Arab countries that curtail the basic rights of parts of their populations, even the elements preaching the most disgustingly offensive messages, are not democracies. It’s puzzling that Satloff doesn’t seem to understand that.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 8th, 2005 at 2:29 pm and is filed under Middle East. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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