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The sense of
community investment has become weaker here in the States, from the often
destructive quest for the holy grail of free market profits, without
accountability to the greater common good. Sen. Robert
Byrd has also raised the call for a national debate on our priorities. I think,
with the bookends of 9/11 and Katrina, Americans are ready to engage in that
debate. One of the issues for the
midterm elections in 2006 and presidential elections in 2008 will be a fresh
look at the big government vs small government policies of the two parties, how
they differ and how they don’t. The disconnect between the ‘governing class’
inside the beltway and the activists creating cyber communities out in the
fifty states could produce constructive change in both parties, if not
splinters attracting the growing majority of independents. kwc Singapore and Katrina
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, NYT, September 14, 2005 Singapore - There is something troublingly self-indulgent
and slothful about America today - something that Katrina highlighted and that
people who live in countries where the laws of gravity still apply really
noticed. It has rattled them - like watching a parent melt down. That is certainly the sense I got after observing the
Katrina debacle from half a world away here in Singapore - a city-state that,
if it believes in anything, believes in good governance. It may roll up the
sidewalks pretty early here, and it may even fine you if you spit out your gum,
but if you had to choose anywhere in Asia you would want to be caught in a
typhoon, it would be Singapore. Trust me, the head of Civil Defense here is not
simply someone's college roommate. Indeed, Singapore believes so strongly that you have to get
the best-qualified and least-corruptible people you can into senior positions
in the government, judiciary and civil service that its pays its prime minister
a salary of $1.1 million a year. It pays its cabinet ministers and Supreme
Court justices just under $1 million a year, and pays judges and senior civil
servants handsomely down the line. From Singapore's early years, good governance mattered
because the ruling party was in a struggle for the people's hearts and minds
with the Communists, who were perceived to be both noncorrupt and caring - so
the state had to be the same and more. Even
after the Communists faded, Singapore maintained a tradition of good governance
because as a country of only four million people with no natural resources, it
had to live by its wits. It needed to run its economy and schools in a way that
would extract the maximum from each citizen, which is how four million people
built reserves of $100 billion. "In the areas that are critical to our survival, like
Defense, Finance and the Ministry of Home Affairs, we look for the best
talent," said Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the Lee Kwan Yew School of Public
Policy. "You lose New Orleans, and you have 100 other cities just like it.
But we're a city-state. We lose Singapore and there is nothing else. ... [So]
the standards of discipline are very high. There is a very high degree of
accountability in Singapore." When a subway tunnel under construction collapsed here in
April 2004 and four workers were killed, a government inquiry concluded that
top executives of the contracting company should be either fined or jailed. The
discipline that the cold war imposed on America, by contrast, seems to have
faded. Last year, we cut the National Science Foundation budget, while
indulging absurd creationist theories in our schools and passing pork-laden
energy and transportation bills in the middle of an energy crisis. We
let the families of the victims of 9/11 redesign our intelligence
organizations, and our president and Congress held a midnight session about the
health care of one woman, Terri Schiavo, while ignoring the health crisis of 40
million uninsured. Our economy seems to be fueled lately by either suing each
other or selling each other houses. Our government launched a war in Iraq
without any real plan for the morning after, and it cut taxes in the middle of
that war, ensuring that future generations would get the bill. Speaking of Katrina, Sumiko Tan, a columnist for the Sunday
edition of The Straits Times in Singapore, wrote: "We were shocked at what
we saw. Death and destruction from natural disaster is par for the course. But
the pictures of dead people left uncollected on the streets, armed looters
ransacking shops, survivors desperate to be rescued, racial divisions - these
were truly out of sync with what we'd imagined the land of the free to be, even
if we had encountered homelessness and violence on visits there. ... If America becomes so unglued when bad
things happen in its own backyard, how can it fulfill its role as leader of the
world?" Janadas Devan, a Straits Times columnist, tried to explain
to his Asian readers how the U.S. is changing. "Today's conservatives,"
he wrote, "differ in one crucial aspect from yesterday's conservatives:
the latter believed in small government, but believed, too, that a country
ought to pay for all the government that it needed. "The former believe in no government, and therefore
conclude that there is no need for a country to pay for even the government
that it does have. ... [But] it is not only
government that doesn't show up when government is starved of resources and
leached of all its meaning. Community doesn't show
up either, sacrifice doesn't show up, pulling together doesn't show up, 'we're
all in this together' doesn't show up." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/14/opinion/14friedman.html?incamp=article_popular |
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