the evangelical outposton Subsidizing Subsidiarity:How Conservatives Failed New Orleans

Joe Carter of the evangelical outpost has an excellent reflection here. Hat tip to Mirror of Justice.

Mr. Carter understands the importance of subsidiarity:

A primary example is the principle of subsidiarity, an idea found in Catholic social thought which is often embraced by conservatives. As David A. Bosnich explains,

This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity which can be performed by a more decentralized entity should be. This principle is a bulwark of limited government and personal freedom.

While limited government, personal freedom, and other such goods are worthy reasons to support such an ideal, there is an even more primary justification: it saves lives. The evacuation of New Orleans provides a useful example of how this works out in a real-world context.

He explains in some detail how the City of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana failed the New Orleaneans from the very beginning--and then blamed their failure to act on the Federal government. Among his observations:

According to the principle of subsidiarity, governmental agencies and leaders at the city, parish, and state agencies hold primary responsibility for implementing the evacuation process. The city of New Orleans apparently agrees, since in their “Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan” they vest the authority to authorize an evacuation with the Mayor and the implementation of such an action with the city’s Office of Emergency Preparedness. The state’s official hurricane evacuation plan even notes that the primary means of evacuation will be personal vehicles but that school and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles, and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating.

How many people would need to be evacuated? In a paper written over a year ago, University of New Orleans researcher Shirley Laska estimated that the city has approximately 120,000 residents who do not have their own transportation and would need to rely on the government. While this is an extremely large number, the Regional Transportation Authority and the local school system have roughly 560 busses in which they could use in an emergency. Assuming that each bus could carry sixty-six passengers, each trip could carry 37,554 residents to safety. Three round-trips would be required to move all 120,000 citizens.

Such a task would naturally be rather time-consuming and fraught with unforeseen difficulties. But it would have almost assuredly save many lives – if it had ever been attempted. Rather than follow their own operating procedures, though, the city allowed the busses to lie dormant and instead advised residents to seek shelter in the Superdome. Only after the storm did the people who had followed this advice discover that they were trapped in the stadium without food or emergency services.

Realizing that their plan was faulty, the city chose to shift the blame to the federal government. Terry Ebbert, the director of homeland security for New Orleans, criticized FEMA for not acting quickly enough to move the 30,000 people who were holed up in the shelter of “last resort.” New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin even had the audacity to criticize the feds for not moving quickly enough after the storm had subsided, “I need 500 buses, man.... This is a national disaster,” said Nagin. “Get every doggone Greyhound busline in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans.” In his rant Nagin never got around to explaining why he never got the 500 buses within the city to move out of New Orleans.

Mr. Carter could let it go there. He doesn't explain why the Federal government failed to mobilize more Federalized troops and National Guard units ahead of the storm. He also remains silent on why FEMA could not get it together. However, his point is that "the principle of subsidiarity was already in place and yet failed to be implemented." Therefore, he doesn't need to say more; he's made his argument.

But he's not finished.

He has strong words for those that claim they support subsidiarity the most: political conservatives. His problem? They don't walk their talk:

Mayor Nagin and Governor Kathleen Blanco deserve the primary blame for the fiasco in New Orleans. But the larger failure belongs to conservatives.

Principles such as subsidiarity, federalism, and limited government are often considered cornerstones of conservative political thought. But when it comes to their actual implementation they are merely given lip-service. While aspiring young politicos sing the praises of states-rights, they prefer to do so on Capital Hill or in D.C. think tanks rather than in the choirs of their state legislatures or local governments. The very idea that our most competent conservative statesmen should be working in their actual states rather than in Washington is considered ludicrous. After all, everyone knows that state and local governments are reserved for the also-rans and has-beens rather than for the able and ambitious. Any job in FEMA, for instance, is considered superior to working in the New Orleans’s Office of Emergency Preparedness.

But mayor’s offices, city councils, and state legislatures all join the “little platoons” that serve as our first line of defense when natural or man-made disasters strike. So why then are we not working to put our best and brightest into these offices? Why do push them to take jobs as Senatorial aides rather than as state senators? Why do we lead them to roles as assistants to assistant directors in the Department of Education rather than as leaders on county school boards? Why do we put our rhetoric behind the local and yet but our faith in the federal?

He asks difficult and important questions. I don't hear any one giving him any convincing answers.

If we Fools, who ought to support the CST principle of subsidiarity, offer only praise and not performance, then we don't support it. It's that simple. Leadership is only as effective as the leaders who demonstrate it. Government is only as effective as the administrators that operate it. If we don't support the lower orders of organization closest to our communities, then we'd better not complain when they fail. We surely better not put out our hands and cry out for a larger order of organization to do for us what we should do for ourselves.

Walk the talk. It's the only way to incarnate the truly Christian life. Including subsidiarity.