I agree in part with Mike Dunford, who thinks there is plenty of blame to go around. It's true that the catastrophe in New Orleans is due to many factors—uncontrollable ones, like the probability of a large hurricane striking the city; passive ones, like Democrats and scientists not fighting stupidity hard enough; active ones, like the dedicated work of Republicans to gut government effectiveness. In a sense, yes, we can say that the disaster is the fault of all Americans.

Unfortunately, that attitude also encourages a kind of passivity, and also enables politicians who say things like this:

"I hope people don't play politics during this period of time," Mr. Bush told Diane Sawyer of ABC's "Good Morning America" in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. "This is a natural disaster, the likes of which our country may have never seen before."

Wrong. This is the time to play politics. We are supposed to be a democracy, and that requires the active engagement of the citizenry in assessing matters of policy. It is our responsibility to listen and observe the decisions of our leaders, and toss out the rascals who do badly and promote the ones who do well. It is exactly in these situations of crisis where policies are tested and we are in the best position to judge. And contrary to Mike, while we clearly have failures at all levels of the process, this is the time where it is our job to stand up and point to specific points of error. It is also obvious that there is one huge, dominant factor that has been operating over decades to culminate now, in this problem and many others: the Republican party. The party of know-nothings, incompetence, greed, bigotry, religious intolerance, and irresponsibility. We now have the government they wanted, and that we allowed them to have.

Robert Farley summarizes our situation. That Bush quote above is a perfect example of the denial of responsibility going on here.

The Republicans have managed a nifty trick over the last twenty-five years. They have worked ceaselessly to make government less effective, while at the same time deriving political benefit from inadequate government. The Republican attack on good governance involves the cutting of necessary funding, the wholesale transfer of critical government capabilities to the private sector, the stocking of government agencies with inept, corrupt, and obstructionist appointees, and the sellout of regulatory agencies to the industries they're supposed to observe.

In a fair world, all of this would result in the Republican party taking some degree of blame for bad governance. In this world, the exact opposite seems to happen. Government fails by design. Government failure feeds into an anti-statist narrative that allows the Republicans to further slash funding, to further gut federal agencies, and to further cripple the capacity of the government to do anything useful.

So where are we at now? Paul Krugman knows.

So America, once famous for its can-do attitude, now has a can't-do government that makes excuses instead of doing its job. And while it makes those excuses, Americans are dying.

Molly Ivins knows.

In fact, there is now a governmentwide movement away from basing policy on science, expertise and professionalism, and in favor of choices based on ideology. If you're wondering what the ideological position on flood management might be, look at the pictures of New Orleans—it seems to consist of gutting the programs that do anything.

We have to wake up. Mike is right to blame scientists and Democrats and all American citizens for allowing this leadership disaster to happen, but we have to look to the source of the decisions that led us to this place. We have to recognize what the goals of the Republican party are.

The Republican agenda is to turn the United States into a third-world shithole.

Not by explicit intent, of course, but by neglect, the promotion of incompetence, and short-sightedness. By treating government as a kleptocracy. By governing badly. By pandering to the stupid, by advocating superstition (let's pray and send bibles to New Orleans!), by poisoning our educational system with nonsense, by haring off on destructive wars that enrich corporate cronies, by belittling expertise and favoring ideology, by ignoring freaking reality.

We're at one of those critical points in history. We can either destroy the Republican party by kicking every one of the bastards out of office^*, or we can watch them destroy our country. This is the time for partisanship. I pick the side of America.

^*Now, if only there were an actual opposition party to make this effort easier…