Post-Katrina Doublethought

The war against stable thought blazes on, the objective being to put the blame on the Bush administration for what happened in New Orleans.

Thomas Friedman of the New York Times personalizes even further. The administration has a “tax policy . . . dominated by the toweringly selfish Grover Norquist–who has been quoted as saying: ‘I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.’” You would think that Mr. Friedman would leave a little place in life for hyperbole–what would he do with the political poets who speak of the “end” of hunger and disease? But he hangs onto the metaphor: “Mr. Norquist is the only person about whom I would say this: I hope he owns property around the New Orleans levee that was never properly finished because of a lack of tax dollars. I hope his basement got flooded.” Planted axiom: the unrepaired levee in New Orleans is the result of a shortage of federal dollars.

About the Author

William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review magazine in 1955.

The war against stable thought blazes on, the objective being to put the blame on the Bush administration for what happened in New Orleans.

Thomas Friedman of the New York Times personalizes even further. The administration has a “tax policy . . . dominated by the toweringly selfish Grover Norquist–who has been quoted as saying: ‘I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.’” You would think that Mr. Friedman would leave a little place in life for hyperbole–what would he do with the political poets who speak of the “end” of hunger and disease? But he hangs onto the metaphor: “Mr. Norquist is the only person about whom I would say this: I hope he owns property around the New Orleans levee that was never properly finished because of a lack of tax dollars. I hope his basement got flooded.” Planted axiom: the unrepaired levee in New Orleans is the result of a shortage of federal dollars.