In comments to Kieran’s last post Daniel has catalogued “some”:http://www.pardonmyenglish.com/archives/2003/08/yeah_so.html “of”:http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110003888 “the”:http://timblair.spleenville.com/archives/004000.php “things”:http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=9574 that the right-wing blogosphere said about the French heatwave of 2003. We could add op-eds like Denis Prager’s “Socialism Kills”:http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=34372 to the roster, but pride of place should surely go to — who else? — Mark Steyn. Steyn makes the following observation in his “‘Events’ don’t just happen”:http://www.middleeastinfo.org/article3822.html :
bq. One of the most tediously over-venerated bits of political wisdom comes from the late British prime minister Harold MacMillan. It was his characteristically laconic Edwardian response as to what he feared most in the months ahead: “Events, dear boy, events.” It turns up in a gazillion books of quotations and 1,000 Fleet Street columns as if it’s some brilliant insight. It’s not. It’s an urbane banality. Even events come, so to speak, politically predetermined. If, for example, you have powerful public sector unions, you will be at the mercy of potentially crippling strikes. The quasi-Eastern European Britain of the 1970s was brought to a halt by a miners’ strike in a way that would have been impossible in the United States. A strike, of course, is man-made. But the best test of the political character of “events” is supposedly natural phenomena.
He draws the following conclusion about earthquakes in Iran, SARS in China, and the French heatwave (having paused to kick the Canadian welfare state along the way) :
bq. By the standards of the world, Iran, China and France are all wealthy societies. They’re vulnerable to “events” because of their organizational principles – a primitive theocracy which disdains modernity; a modified totalitarianism which thinks you can reap the benefits of capitalism without the institutions of liberty; and a cradle-to-grave welfare state that has so enfeebled its citizens’ ability to act as responsible adults that even your dead mum is just one more inconvenience the government should do something about.
Read the whole thing, as they say.
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MFB 09.02.05 at 3:59 am
In which world are Iran, China and France all equally wealthy? Not the one I have the fortune to live in. And how does Mr. Steyn communicate from that world to mine? And could he please stop?
Chris Bertram 09.02.05 at 4:00 am
Not really worth a separate post:
“S.T. Karnick in TechCentralStation”:http://www.techcentralstation.com/090105A.html , 1 September:
bq. One of the major techniques of modern politics is to take every important event and tie it to the back of one’s own particular hobby horse.
“Iain Murray in TechCentralStation”:http://www.techcentralstation.com/090205C.html , 2 September:
bq. We have built up a frightening array of environmental regulations over the years. The EPA’s recent actions constitute an admission that these are a luxury we cannot afford when lives are at risk. As we recover from this disaster, perhaps we can also recover from the disease of over-regulation.
bad Jim 09.02.05 at 4:39 am
That’s funny, Bertram. I particularly like this bit of slightly misdirected criticism:
Among the many things that doomed New Orleans, the environmentally insensitive over-regulation of the flow of the Mississippi wiped out the delta wetlands that used to buffer the city against hurricanes.
y81 09.02.05 at 8:13 am
You are doing a good job, bad jim, of tying this important event to the back of your own particular hobby horse. I really doubt that bigger swamps would have protected New Orleans from a category 4 hurricane.
Ketzl Brame 09.02.05 at 8:26 am
y81, the real damage to New Orleans was caused not by the hurricane directly but by the storm surge and related flooding draining into Lake Ponchartrain, which the Army Corps of Engineers guesses overtopped the levees and then quickly eroded them causing “scour holes”. Of course bigger barrier swamps would have ameliorated the storm surge, volume and velocity of the floodwaters. Do you want reference URLs?
Thomas 09.02.05 at 8:27 am
Hw’s this: Mrk Styn s s rd t th Frnch s Krn Hly s t mrcns.
s a mrcn, pls llw m t sy fck ff t Krn, nd ‘ll llw th Frnch t sy wht thy wll t Mrk Styn.
Steve LaBonne 09.02.05 at 8:29 am
Steyn is a piece of work. Those who visit Pharyngula (highly recommended to anyone at all interested in biology) will be aware that one of his latest exploits is a flirtation with Idiotic Design. I regard ID as a quick, handy intelligence / intellectual honesty test for conservatives. (Even Krauthammer passed that one with good marks, for pete’s sake.)
y81 09.02.05 at 8:44 am
Sure, ketzl. Please include some people with credentials in engineering–i.e. not environmentalist lawyers–stating with confidence, based on quantitative analysis, that the levees would not have broken if the swamps in Louisiana were bigger.
Ketzl Brame 09.02.05 at 9:02 am
Ah, y81, begging your kindness, I’ll pass on your impossible strawman-request to prove the levees wouldn’t have broken. But back to my original question. Would you like references to back up the assertion that wetlands ameliorate flooding?
Nabakov 09.02.05 at 9:05 am
Even the bloody Chinese managed to get their act together when dealing with more people in the face of a lesser threat.
The current US Regime has been banging fon or four (4!) years that it’s getting it’s shit together for exactly such major disasters – y’know, national co-ordination and all that shit.
And they blew it like Superdome big.
This isn’t even ideological anymore. It’s gross and utter incompentence. If terrorists let off a dirty bomb or cracked a reactor containment vessel right now, the whole federal apparatus will just go pop like a soap bubble.
What homeland security?
y81 09.02.05 at 9:13 am
Ketzl, I don’t think, and I haven’t seen anyone suggest, that the surge in Lake Ponchartrain would have been much alleviated by more swamps in the southern delta. Those swamps alleviate the storm surge coming up the river, but the surge into the lake is a different matter.
In fact, what we have here is a set of inconsistent desires. One faction, the Army Corps of Engineers, wants a “hard” solution to flood prevention, i.e., dredge the river and build bigger levees. Another faction, the environmentalists, wants a “soft” solution, i.e., less dredging and canalizing, which creates more wetlands. Because of this disagreement, along with the thousand other factions in Washington, neither side gets all it wants. But after the fact, each side is quick is to claim that if its wishes had been granted, the catastrophe would not have happened.
Ketzl Brame 09.02.05 at 9:42 am
I can’t disagree about conflicting desires, y81, and that the way to resolve them should come from good unbiased science. I think it’s becoming clear that whatever the solution might have been, waiting to implement it was disastrous.
But then, from this depressingly prescient article in the American Society of Civil Engineers magazine, it sounds like the decline in wetlands, the subsidence of land in the river delta and the rise in sea level would doom any plan eventually, be it more wetlands or higher levees or even rerouting the Mississippi into Lake Pontchartrain. Still, we should done something more.
yabonn 09.02.05 at 10:04 am
Damn.
I was about to say – no, not even – i was about to think out loud that there are few embarrassing days to come for the right wingers, unable as they are to utter “more goverment money should have been spent here” or “the irak war made it worse” or “the planning was not even wrong”.
But that would be tieing things to the back of my own particular hobby horse, which would be bad. So i’ll refrain.
Better watch some more looting porn, or mourn the inconsistency of desires and all that, or both.
a 09.02.05 at 10:16 am
I think the French cared about their elderly dying, but they cared more about their vacations.
The Americans don’t even care about the poor dying any more. Haven’t since Reagan.
roger 09.02.05 at 10:44 am
This post is so morally weird. Who cares about getting Steyn or the heat wave deaths in France, for God’s sake? Are people in the Civic Center looking around and saying, wow, less people have died here than in that French heat wave — we must be doing something right? Or, contrariwise, gee that Mark Steyn must be eating his words right now?
Chris Bertram 09.02.05 at 11:01 am
Roger, the point is that the rw have been sounding off about how disgusting it is of the left to score points from a natural disaster. Unfortunately, in the age of google, it is easy to demonstrate that they did just the same (and in an especially crass way).
The Steyn piece stands out because it explicitly claims that natural disasters reveal the (bankrupt) nature of the societies that fail to deal with them.
Crystal 09.02.05 at 11:13 am
How can Steyn claim that France and China are “primitive theocracies?” Both are secular and modern (or in the case of China, a combination of modern, modernizing, and still-feudal). The United States is probably more of a theocracy than either France or China.
roger 09.02.05 at 11:24 am
Chris, I understand the point. To my mind, though, it is giving in to a certain temptation of the intellect to fall for the gotcha game in the midst of a crisis. One of the great classic stories, the story of the Tarbaby, makes this point, which is a deep philosophical one: controversies themselves have unequal value. Some are worth engaging in, some aren’t. Are we really going to be surprised that the rw defends Bush at this late date? There are a lot more salient criticisms of the D.C. GOP that can be made, I think. For instance, that the same congress that cut funding for FEMA jovially came up with the funds to build a highway literally from nowhere to nowhere in Alaska, and name it after the current Republican senator.
There’s a line in the big Lebowski: “not a worthy adversary, dude.” Which is the attitude I believe you should take to Steyn.
Dan Simon 09.02.05 at 11:25 am
Chris, you de-voweled Thomas’ post–presumably because of the foul language–but his point still stands. I don’t get the impression from your posting that you’re endorsing the views of Steyn, Prager et al. regarding the outcomes of the disasters in Iran, China and France. Yet Kieran’s posting was quite similar–blaming a government run by his political opponents for the desperate straits of natural disaster victims not (or not yet) sufficiently helped by the authorities.
Perhaps we can agree that emergency response is never as effective as we would like it to be, and that it can always be improved, but that specific proposals for improvements in preparedness and operations are much more appropriate in times of tragedy than partisan sniping about how their screwups are to blame for all the suffering?
Chris Bertram 09.02.05 at 11:37 am
Well Dan, I entirely endorse what Steyn says in the first paragraph I quote. The general principle he enunciates there seems to me to be entirely sound and to be basically the same as Kieran’s point. As Steyn says: “the best test of the political character of “events†is supposedly natural phenomena.” Steyn’s judgement of particular societies is another matter.
John Emerson 09.02.05 at 11:44 am
Chris, you failed to disenvowel Simon’s post, but that’s really quite OK. I’m very tolerant of failures to disenvowel. (Yes, I’ve turned over a new leaf. You’re seeing the new me).
If there’s anything to be learned from a disaster, it’s learned on the spot or not at all. Tomorrow never comes.
There’s nothing wrong with politicization, unless you believe in the one-party state, or in rule by wise and inaccesible elites. Those who failed in their responsibility (which presumably includes many corrupt Louisiana Democrats). “Finger-pointing” is the culprit’s word for “accountability”.
I have no idea whether Simon is a VRWC hack explaining to Democrats what they must do, or just another hapless, highminded liberal, but screw him.
abb1 09.02.05 at 11:46 am
How can Steyn claim that France and China are “primitive theocracies?â€
His characterizations have to be read ad seriatim:
Iran, China, France
theocracy, talitarianism, welfare state
Grand Moff Texan 09.02.05 at 12:01 pm
a primitive theocracy which disdains modernity; a modified totalitarianism which thinks you can reap the benefits of capitalism without the institutions of liberty
That pretty much sums up the present regime in the US.
.
Dan Simon 09.02.05 at 12:06 pm
Okay, Chris–where, exactly, do you part company with Steyn? Do you think that the governmental responses to the disasters in France, China and Iran in 2003 were entirely adequate? Or is it your position that drawing conclusions about the competence of a government from its disaster response is fair when the government in question is a conservative Republican administration in the US, but not when it’s a French administration–or even a totalitarian theocracy or one-party dictatorship? And if so, on what basis do you make this moral distinction?
Uncle Kvetch 09.02.05 at 12:18 pm
I understand the conservative impulse to think of “The French” as a single brain with 61 million bodies attached to it, but I think it bears pointing out that many, many French citizens (and French media figures) criticized their government vehemently for its slow response and incompetence during and immediately after the heatwave. Should they have kept their mouths shut instead?
abb1 09.02.05 at 12:24 pm
I completely disagree that adequacy of governmental responses to disasters is a general characteristic of a political system. In a totalitarian dictatorship where I am the totalitarian dictator responses will be swift, efficient and flawless.
The inadequacy of responses probably best correlates with the level of corruption.
dipnut 09.02.05 at 1:56 pm
Unfortunately, in the age of google, it is easy to demonstrate that they did just the same (and in an especially crass way).
Whew, thanks. I couldn’t figure out what you were getting at.
The Steyn piece stands out because it explicitly claims that natural disasters reveal the (bankrupt) nature of the societies that fail to deal with them.
Oops, confused again. You’re not even pretending to refute Steyn’s claim. So, what? You’re saying the US is just-as-bad as France et. al?
I suppose the fact that President Carter didn’t have St. Helens re-stuffed before the pyroclastic flows reached the foothills, indicates the institutional and cultural frailty of American society that persists to this day.
Get in touch when the US loses 50,000 people to a heat wave, or when France experiences a non-piddling natural disaster.
lemuel pitkin 09.02.05 at 2:20 pm
I’m with roger. This kind of point-scoring isn’t worthy of Crooked Timber. Steyn’s an idiot, agreed. What possible purpose does it serve to use Katrina to make that point again?
catherine liu 09.02.05 at 3:39 pm
How did dipnut get the figure 55,000 lost to a heat wave?
If dipnut going to lie and distort these kinds of figures on line, at least do a better job of covering your ass by giving plausible, but completely fabricated figures.
John Emerson 09.02.05 at 3:52 pm
Yeah, CT is too lame to score any points, or want to. Heaven forfend that any points be wrongly scored by our side. (Hat tip: G. Will). We are meant for higher things.
lemuel pitkin 09.02.05 at 4:10 pm
John, the problem with scoring rhetorical points against the likes of Steyn isn’t (as you seem to imply) that it’s wrong or unfair. It’s that it’s boring and predictable; it makes us stupid and distracts us from much more interesting issues. And it won’t have any effect on its ostensible target.
Context, as always, is key. If Chris Bertram finds himself ona TV talkshow opposite Mark Steyn, then fire away! — the lower the blow, the better. But on CT it’s just a circle-jerk.
dipnut 09.02.05 at 4:26 pm
How did dipnut get the figure 55,000 lost to a heat wave?
Ahem: I said 50,000. I multiplied the French loss of life (10,000 plus) against the ratio of US population to France population (nearly 5).
I thought that would be obvious.
soubzriquet 09.02.05 at 5:22 pm
dipnut:
That is a rather strong assertion of linear scaling to make without support.
I’ll avoid (due to lack of time just now) any sort of detailed comment, but note that even if we could make a sensible comparison `The French screwed up too’ is a truly pathetic defense of incompetence.
yabonn 09.02.05 at 6:49 pm
But on CT it’s just a circle-jerk.
Do we actually live in that world where debunking bullshit goes without saying?
jet 09.02.05 at 6:49 pm
After being glued to the police scanners for the last several days, I’d say the screw up was not showing that we still had some law. The mere threat of gunfire has costs untold lives. The actual gunfire has cost quite a bit too. You can’t wait for these stories to come out. Like the crazy assholes who won’t let firefighters and cops rescue people from a building that is onfire and kept shooting at them from rooftops. Were airlifted by a marine chopper. I wonder what happened to the people in the building?
Google yourself up some “New Orleans Scanner” and you won’t believe the joy being had in NO from the cops vs thugs. That is the source of this clusterfuck.
dipnut 09.02.05 at 6:56 pm
That is a rather strong assertion of linear scaling to make without support.
Ho-hum.
…even if we could make a sensible comparison `The French screwed up too’ is a truly pathetic defense of incompetence.
I’m not defending, I’m trying to figure out what this post was about.
Mark Steyn says disasters expose the structure and weaknesses of the social order. Oh, no wait, Kieran Healy says that. Well, anyway, we all agree.
So what are we arguing over? Well, some of you regard Steyn’s observations with distaste, but accept Healy’s. Steyn criticizes France, whereas Healy critiques America. All this would make sense, if Steyn overlooked (or undervalued) the defects in America’s social order, as illustrated by disaster.
So I consider what the French heat wave debacle says about France, and what the New Orleans hurricane debacle says about the US. Of course no such comparison can ever rise to the level of being “sensible”. But France gets the worst of it.
Yes, the scene in New Orleans is horrific right now. Yes, better planning and response could have alleviated the misery and saved many lives. That is always true, in every disaster.
But a heat-wave shouldn’t even be a disaster. A heat wave does not compare to the sudden catastrophic flooding of a large densely-populated area, having an exceptionally vulnerable social ecology. A heat wave does not disrupt communications or transportation. A heat wave does not sweep buildings from their foundations, or cause the collapse of local government.
Yet, somehow, little France managed to get a Katrina-like death toll out of a heat wave. This suggests that Steyn’s emphasis on the failings of French society was not misplaced.
I mean, like, whatever, dude.
nick 09.02.05 at 7:33 pm
The mere threat of gunfire has costs untold lives. The actual gunfire has cost quite a bit too.
So an armed society isn’t necessarily a polite society?
Randy Paul 09.02.05 at 8:02 pm
Y81:
You might want to catch the edition of Now on PBS this weekend.
Peter 09.02.05 at 10:35 pm
Dipnut, did you read what Steyn wrote about France and the heat wave? Let me repeat the offending paragraph:
I have never a columnist engage in a more naked (and snide) display of Schedenfreude in response to a disaster. Sorry, but there is no asbolutely no comparison of the Steyn piece to Kieran’s post on the social ecology of New Orleans.
dipnut 09.02.05 at 10:59 pm
Fair enough, Peter. It doesn’t seem like schadenfreude to me, but I won’t claim to speak for Steyn.
I have no particular quarrel with Professor Healy.
MikeN 09.03.05 at 12:33 am
The Chicago heat-wave of 1995 caused 739 deaths; the population of France is over 20 times that of Chicago; scaling up leads to about 15,000 deaths compared to the 10,000 in France.
And, once again, mostly the poor and elderly.
Procrastinator 09.03.05 at 4:49 am
Out of interest, can any of the historians here tell me how the current response compares to, say, the 1900 Galveston Storm?
Numbnut >> Yet, somehow, little France managed to get a Katrina-like death toll out of a heat wave. This suggests that Steyn’s emphasis on the failings of French society was not misplaced.
Quite possibly, but this doesn’t detract from that point made by the likes of Soubzriquet – that it has diddly-squat to the response, or lack of response, to NO. You state that that nothing could have been done to hold back the full fury of a grade 4 hurricane… again, yes, but a damn sight more could have been done to lessen the effect. Just as GWB could have shown a better sense of urgency when initially interviewed. Just as medical aid could have arrived #before# he did to cast his Olympian eye across the bayou.
But, aside from all your Hutton-ing, you do have a point about the cheese-eating surrender monkeys… who the bleedin’ ‘eck would build a city below sea-level in hurricane-country?
Procrastinator 09.03.05 at 5:40 am
And anyway… what’s all this about “little” France soaking up a big death toll? In keeping with the Bushies’ comparative geography, France is about twice the size of Colorado – thus, much smaller than the area affected by Katrina. Yet, she has the greater population. Thus, it looks as if Katrina is going to have caused the greater proportion of deaths.
A tortuous analogy, granted, but YOU started it.
~#blows raspberries#~
Robin Green 09.03.05 at 9:01 am
who the bleedin’ ‘eck would build a city below sea-level in hurricane-country?
The French Quarter (the original part built by the French) is in fact above sea level.
Procrastinator 09.03.05 at 3:06 pm
Oh dear. Can’t we still mock ’em? Please.
Ken 09.04.05 at 12:41 pm
“So an armed society isn’t necessarily a polite society?”
No, a society infested with more than its share of vicious thugs isn’t necessarily a polite society, armed or not.
Hugues 09.06.05 at 8:49 am
You don’t have to be an American conservative or a pathological French-basher to dare establishing links between Katrina and the 2003 heatwave in France. This comparison actually makes a lot of sense, even from a French view point:
http://hugues.blogs.com/commvat/2005/09/katrina_et_les_.html
But doing so doesn’t necessarily lead to thinking that the American or the French responses to their local catastrophes were proof of governmental incompetence. Is it not possible to accept that not everything is always under control? Are we so sure we should be able to tackle any problem by just doing “the right thingâ€, hence consolidating dykes or providing everyone in the land with air conditioning?
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