Samizdata

Thanks to Sean Sirrine of Objective Justice for pointing out the live audio feed from police radio in Hurricane blasted Baton Rouge.

Astonishing.

Want to see some robust news blogged from the front lines of the crisis in New Orleans? Try here.

Perhaps someone has some ideas on links to reputable sites where people can help with donations? Here is one place to start if you want to lend a hand.

It is very hard to know what to say, from the comfort of London, about the horror that has engulfed New Orleans and nearby places. Johnathan Pearce did his best yesterday, concentrating on what he knows about, which is the financial fall-out and the British news coverage.

But Ben Jarrell‘s situation is very different. Finding the words to describe this catastrophe is the least of his problems, because he and his wife have been personally hit by it. He added what follows as a comment on Johnathan’s posting, but his words, and his predicament, surely deserve a bit more prominence here than that.

I live in uptown New Orleans, and my wife and I evac’d Saturday morning – but as reports of the levees breaking and the city’s poor looting (I’ve heard reports they are looting on my street) I don’t expect to have much of anything left when I get home.

This global warming bullshit is ridiculous, and despite the amount of aid the US provided to the tsunami victims, I still expect the global community will pretend to care while choking back a smirk.

As for FEMA, despite my libertarian leanings, I will be standing in line for whatever I can get. My belongings are insured, but my insurance company won’t pay off on the policy until an adjuster can go in and look at the damage – which could be months.

We escaped with little more than a suitcase full of clothes, and it will be nearly impossible to function for the months it might take to get any resolution to all of this.

It is really surreal. It’s hard to think that we are homeless refugees, but that pretty much sums up our situation.

Clive Davis, writing for TCS last week, has some sad news for his American friends:

Mrs. Miniver is dead. The funeral was held some time ago, and there were not many mourners in attendance.

Mrs. Miniver being a character in a Hollywood film that represented all that was best about war-time Britain and Middle England. Looking beyond the pageantry of the Anglosphere, a different picture emerges:

Immediately after 9/11, much was made of such ceremonial gestures as the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the Changing of the Guard. Dig a little deeper, though, and there’s no mistaking the hostility to American values among large sections of the British population. Conservative commentators in the US have got plenty of mileage out of jibes at French anti-Americanism; the unpleasant truth is that Britain is home to a similar phenomenon.

Why the hostility? When did this happen and why? My experience supports Clive’s view to some extent. Although I tend to move in circles where America may be criticised for some things but respected for many of its qualities, I am often taken aback by latent anti-Americanism when talking to people outside those circles. The most annoying thing about such attitude is that it is emotive, not based on anything other than some misplaced zen-like view of the world. Well, you know, there should be some counter-balance to the US power… . As Clive quite rightly notes it is a potent mix of ignorance and arrogance that feeds the Middle England’s political cosmology. (Or shall I say astrology…)

Perhaps as a consequence of all those hours spent sighing over Hugh Grant, Americans tend to assume that British are much more worldly and sophisticated than they really are. The truth is, when it comes to knowledge of American history and institutions, the Brits are woefully uninformed. What they are familiar with is American popular culture, which is – as I don’t need to remind you – a different thing all together. The result of that false sense of familiarity is a toxic combination of ignorance and arrogance. Besides, the British middle classes (like many of their counterparts in the US) do not necessarily see American popular culture as an unmitigated force for good. As the cultural critic Martha Bayles observes in an essay on public diplomacy in the latest edition of the Wilson Quarterly: “Popular culture is no longer ‘America’s secret weapon.’ On the contrary, it is a tsunami by which others feel engulfed. ”

Indeed, the thing that seems to gall the British chattering classes and, at the same time, helps them maintain their sense of superiority is the impression that Americans are, oh so, stupid. I find myself replying with increasing frequency that in a country where people are free to be as triumpantly stupid, it also means that they are free to be triumphantly creative and innovative.

Update: Clive posted comments emailed by readers of the TCS article on his blog.

Take note: Michael Barone has a blog. And its just as good (so far) as you knew it would be. Takeaway line from his first few posts:

All of which only illustrates my First Rule of Life: All process arguments are insincere, including this one.

And he hints at the problem that will bring the GOP down, if not next year then very likely in 2008: the lackluster-to-disastrous domestic performance of the Bush administration and the Republican Congress have given most Republicans no reason to turn out and vote for them. As Virginia Postrel said recently (sorry, can’t remember where), now that the Republicans have given up on economic freedom and markets, they are basically just the party of social/religious conservatism after all.

And if that’s all you got, you won’t win many elections in this country.

The retirement of a Supreme Court justice is always big news in the USA. Coming on the heels of a ruling which made big business developers grasping municipalities across the United States rub their hands together with glee, it is vital that the mindset which produced one of the most monstrous anti-liberty trends in America today not be reinforced with yet another ultra-statist. To her credit, although Sandra Day O’Connor was neither a darling of the right nor consistently supporting of civil liberties, she did dissent quite strongly from the monstrous Kelo verdict.

Perhaps now that more people are seeing past the simplistic left/right divide on the issue of eminent domain abuse, the importance of insisting on a judge who does revolt at the very idea of such a predator’s charter should become the main focus not just for George W. Bush but people of any party who think that being secure in your property is one of the very lynchpins of a free society.

Peggy Noonan, former Reagan speechwriter and current Wall Street Journal columnist, often serves in my mind of an example of how even East Coast conservatives share a mindset that is parochial, elitist, insular, and irredeemably statist. However, in today’s column she steps back from the Bos-Wash bubble to marvel at the bloviating egomaniacs that populate Washington.

What’s wrong with them? That’s what I’m thinking more and more as I watch the news from Washington.

Welcome to the club, Peggy. Too bad it took you so many decades to join up.

How exactly does it work? How does legitimate self-confidence become wildly inflated self-regard? How does self respect become unblinking conceit? How exactly does one’s character become destabilized in Washington?

And, bless her, she even takes on the fair-haired boy of the elites, Barack Obama. Barack is widely heralded because he is young, a Democrat, reasonably articulate, and, of course, because he is black. He has also revealed himself to be a first-rate egomaniac. Although in the Senate he doesn’t even make the A team for self-importance, what with such colossi as Roberty Byrd and John McCain to contend with, he is certainly putting himself forward as a bloviator to be reckoned with.

This week comes the previously careful Sen. Barack Obama, flapping his wings in Time magazine and explaining that he’s a lot like Abraham Lincoln, only sort of better. “In Lincoln’s rise from poverty, his ultimate mastery of language and law, his capacity to overcome personal loss and remain determined in the face of repeated defeat–in all this he reminded me not just of my own struggles.”

Because this kind of inflated self-regard is part of the molecular make-up of politicians, there is no such thing as “good” government, instituted through any kind of ethical or institutional means. There is only “limited” government.