The City of New Orleans will not be rebuilt

The Automated Metropolis

The always insightful Joel Garreau argues that, however much he or you or I might prefer otherwise, the City of New Orleans will not be rebuilt. The economy may demand a port there, he writes, but the port no longer demands a city:

Also distinct from the city are the region's ports, lining 172 miles of both banks of the Mississippi, as well as points on the Gulf. For example, the largest in the Western Hemisphere is the 54-mile stretch of the Port of South Louisiana. It is centered on La Place, 20 miles upriver from New Orleans. It moved 199 million tons of cargo in 2003, including the vast bulk of the river's grain. That is more than twice as much as the Port of New Orleans, according to the American Association of Port Authorities. The Port of Baton Rouge, almost as big as the Port of New Orleans, was not damaged. Also, downstream, there is the LOOP -- the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port out in the Gulf that handles supertankers requiring water depths of 85 feet. These ports are just a few of the biggest.

Illustrating how different the Port of New Orleans is from the city, its landline phones were back in business a week ago, says Gary LaGrange, the port's president and CEO. "The river is working beautifully," he reports, and "the terminal's not that bad."

Throughout the world, you see an increasing distinction between "port" and "city." As long as a port needed stevedores and recreational areas for sailors, cities like New Orleans -- or Baltimore or Rotterdam -- thrived. Today, however, the measure of a port is how quickly it can load or unload a ship and return it to sea. That process is measured in hours. It is the product of extremely sophisticated automation, which requires some very skilled people but does not create remotely enough jobs to support a city of half a million or so.

The dazzling Offshore Oil Port, for example, employs only about 100 people. Even the specialized Port of New Orleans, which handles things like coffee, steel and cruise boats, only needs 2,500 people on an average day, LaGrange says.

Posted by Jesse Walker at 06:12 PM | Comments (26)

Blankley Going Where Wrong Men Had Gone Before

Washington Times Opinion Editor Tony Blankley gives a helpfully clear demonstration of how some conservatives are convinced that the War on Terror is only winnable if we enthusiastically scale back American liberties. Starting off, persistently enough, with a 21st century update to that world-beating war strategy, Japanese internment:

During World War II, the country was faced with the prospect of large numbers of people -- again identifiable by ethnicity, not conduct -- who were real or potential enemies.

The logic of the Supreme Court's opinion is applicable to the situation we face today. The court held that people ethnically connected to the war-makers are more likely to support them than are others -- and our country at war has a right to protect itself from this presumed higher risk of danger.

This is true regardless of the personal innocence of particular individuals.

Next, Blankley pines for a Supreme Court that helps persecute the insufficiently patriotic:

Members of the Jehovah's Witnesses were prosecuted during World War II for refusing to let their children recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, a liberal, wrote the majority opinion in the case. He upheld the school expulsions and parental prosecutions for violating compulsory attendance laws.

Justice Frankfurter observed that "the mere possession of religious convictions which contradict the relevant concerns of a political society does not relieve the citizen from the discharge of political responsibilities."

This is particularly applicable to the situation we face today.

And why is a terrible 60-year-old spasm of paranoid injustice "applicable," suddenly? Brace yourself for the illiteral historical analogy:

But back then, as now, we were a nation of newly arrived immigrants, threatened from abroad and bombarded with destructive ideologies.

Then, it was communism and fascism. Today, it is multiculturalism, political correctness and, among the Muslim population, radical Islam.

Italics mine. That's right, Tony Blankley (an immigrant himself, by the way) just committed the Mother of all Godwins by comparing the two most murderous political ideologies in modern history to ...ing "political correctness."

I'm beginning to suspect that the phrase "let loose the dogs of war" was meant to refer just as much to the yapping loons on the homefront.
Posted by Matt Welch at 04:17 PM | Comments (34)

Woah

George Bush today:

Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government. And to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility.

On a second pass, that "to the extent" has a bit of the ring of "I'm sorry if I offended anyone." Still, let's hope that's the start of a trend. (Hat tip: TPM)

Posted by Julian Sanchez at 03:35 PM | Comments (33)

Common Ground

This makes me happy:

The ethnically divided Bosnian city of Mostar has agreed to erect a new symbol of unity -- a statue of kung fu legend Bruce Lee, worshipped by Muslims, Serbs and Croats.

Posted by Jesse Walker at 03:20 PM | Comments (26)

Fat Is Phat, or, In Defense of Lard-Ass Americans

From the always-interestin' Spiked, a piece by Daniel Ben-Ami that chews over why so many people hate fat Americans:

Overweight Americans represent, in caricatured form, the affluence of US society. They are the personification of a society in which scarcity, if not eliminated, has become marginalised. Yet we live in a world in which consumption is seen as a problem and the possibility of creating a better society is seen as unrealistic. By focusing on fat Americans the critics of consumption are saying, implicitly at least, that people should consume less. They are arguing for a world in which Americans become more like those who live in the poorer countries of the world. From such a perspective equality means levelling everyone down rather than raising the living standards of the poor. It means giving up on the battle to resist hurricanes or to reclaim land from the sea. Yet implementing such a viewpoint is a super-size mistake. Our aspiration for the world should be to give the poor the advantages of affluence enjoyed by those in the West. Living standards in countries such as Ethiopia and Niger should be, at the very least, as high as those in America today. In that sense we should all aim to be fat Americans.

Whole thing here.

Reason grokked chubsy-ubsyism here, here, and here.
Posted by Nick Gillespie at 03:12 PM | Comments (27)

New at Reason

Officials keep insisting that Katrina survivors are not "refugees." Kerry Howley agrees: We have competently executed plans for dealing with international refugees.
Posted by Julian Sanchez at 02:14 PM | Comments (13)

Litigation Ho

Plaid-throated Minnesota bore, Homegrown Democrat and censorship casualty Garrison Keillor is threatening to sue a blogger for selling a T-shirt that says "A Prairie Ho Companion." (Link via Sploid.)
Posted by Matt Welch at 12:56 PM | Comments (36)

Radio Comes to the Astrodome

Remember that radio station for the Astrodome's evacuees that the dome authorities decided to block? The organizers went back to the drawing board, and at noon central time today they'll start broadcasting from the parking lot instead.
Posted by Jesse Walker at 12:20 PM | Comments (13)

=========
Charles Goyette
6:00 - 9:00am
Charles Goyette is a familiar voice to radio listeners all across Arizona. His broadcasting career has taken him from Flagstaff to Sedona and Tucson, with stops in southern California as well, before settling in Phoenix. In 2003 Charles Goyette was voted the best local air personality.

Charles positively delights in questioning the conventional wisdom. There is no political correctness, no sacred cow or authority that he won't challenge - with plenty of fun along the way!

Charles was the winner of the New Times Best Talk Show Personality in 2003

Charles Goyette can be reached from his home page at: HTTP://www.charlesgoyette.com
Charles Goyette Archive & Schedule can be accessed at: http://www.charlesgoyette.com/archive