Anne Applebaum today gives us various examples of the failings of "big government" in hurricane relief, and concomitant successes of "civil society."  She is pressing against those, like the German Chancellor, who see in the failings of the US response to Katrina a need for more and better government management of disaster relief.  Applebaum clearly hopes for a future not of more government but of more civil society.  While her critique of what went wrong with Washington-based bureaucracies has some truth in it, her dichotomy of big government v. civil society obscures as much as it reveals. 

     The size and organization of governing institutions matter, of course.  Applebaum’s libertarian streak echoes Taoist sensibilities of smaller government that doesn’t interfere in society all that much.  Indeed, the Tao Te Ching may go further than Applebaum in its appeal for limited government:

The more prohibitions rule all beneath heaven
the deeper poverty grows among the people.
The more shrewd leaders there are
the faster dark confusion fills the nation.
The more cleverness people learn
the faster strange things happen.
The faster laws and decrees are issued
the more bandits and thieves appear  (57).

    But there is another point here that Applebaum is missing and Taoists would say is futile: the purpose of government.  If we take a page from Mencius we will keep in mind that there are certain ends that the government – the "big" federal government – really should serve, functions that have been weakened by corruption and selfishness.

    The notion of "public good," or "commonweal" has been attenuated in the US in recent decades.  From at least the time of the Reagan administration, when the argument that "government is the problem" gained wider currency, we have increasingly lost sight of the fact that certain public goods – things like the provision of security, the evacuation of the sick, the coordination of overall relief efforts – cannot be adequately provided by private interests. 

    While there has been a gratifying private sector response to Katrina, the sad truth is that all of this came too late to minimize the suffering of New Orleans (notice how collecting the dead bodies has taken so long!) because there is no profit in the mundane tasks of preparation and planning.  To stockpile water and supplies; to have transportation ready to evacuate the underprivileged; to anticipate health and safety crises are not going to earn anyone a lot of money.  Quite to the contrary, a lot of money needs to be expended, up front, on these goods in order to avoid the kind of disaster wrought by Katrina.  Government cannot stop the hurricane, but it should be poised to respond more quickly and competently when disaster strikes.

    The purpose of government, whether big or small, should thus be clear: to conceive of and respond to the broadest social needs.  Civil society,  though the term has such a pleasing sound, simply does not do this.  Most of what we call "civil society" are very narrowly drawn groups, centering on very specific functional or local interests, and have neither the vision nor the capacity to serve the public good.  Even big organizations, like the Red Cross, cannot do it all: when the security situation broke down, so did the relief effort.  The public good requires national-level coordination by national institutions that are not swayed by local or special interests.

    We need to have a conversation about reconstituting the idea of the public good in the US (and another to consider the ways in which public institutions have been weakened by personal patronage and particular interests).  And the conversation needs to link the public good with notions of justice and fairness, for those too, are a part of the purpose of government.  Here is a quote from Mencius to kick off the discussion:

Old men without wives we call widowers.  Old women without husbands we call widows. Old people without children we call loners.  Children without fathers we call orphans.  These four kinds of people – they are the forsaken ones of this world.  They have no on to turn to.  When Emperor Wen’s rule spread Humanity throughout the land, he put these four kinds of people above all else. (29)

     We could expand the definition of "the forsaken" here to include those made homeless and jobless by natural disaster.  However we want to frame the category of needy,  Mencius is suggesting is  the public good – which is what would follow from the spread of Humanity –  includes  protection of those most vulnerable and weak in our society.  Some part of this can be accomplished by civil society, but government – symbolized here by the great historical figure of Emperor Wen – is ultimately responsible.  If King Wen had been running the show, those folks at the Convention Center in New Orleans would not have been languishing for so long…