A new trend

I wrote this response to John Zogby's editorial claiming that the response to Katrina could be a more important influence on the 2008 election than Iraq.

http://www.zogby.com/news/readnews.dbm?ID=1326

Xthplanet:

John,

I just read your editorial “Will Katrina Be Our Defining Moment?”. This is one of the more positive signs I’ve heard about our common electorate I’ve heard yet. Kudos to you for going out on a limb (i.e. being ahead of the polling). I think that the Katrina response, more than any other, has exposed, consciously or unconsciously, the deep amoralism which under girds our political/economic system (modern Market theory) and the idea that you sense a deep response in the public indicates to me that ‘we’ might just opt for a humane theory of government in our near future. (amoralism defined here as the argument that it is Irrational to care about people that you are not related to.) One need only breifly look through the writings of Milton Friedman or Ludwig von Mises to find reference to the ‘need’ to remove the human sensibility from economic arguments. In case I’m being unclear, I am saying that the Katrina response is a direct result of Market theory in action as the Administration has spent the last six years making the Federal Government more in line with these ideas.
I think that, if you are correct, the public has rightly sensed the ‘real-world’ consequences of this theoretical point through the Katrina response. Although the ‘amoralist’ framework I’m asserting is more overt in ‘conservative’ rhetoric, the failure of any on the ‘liberal’ side to address it directly means to me that we, collectively, are in a kind of free-fall waiting for someone, anyone to show us ‘a better way’ whether or not that way leads to the results that you sense the public desires . Of coarse the legitimizing of caring, in a theoretical sense, must be coupled with success in the marketplace, as very few advocates of caring seem to see the importance of, for the response to the Katrina ‘failure’ to be more than pandering to emotions (pathos in a rhetorical sense). I still remain hopeful that you are sensing a true desire on the part of the public to support a politician who can rationalize caring about us Americans and our society at the federal level.