Today's required reading

"An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State," by Robert Tracinski.

"Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists—myself included—did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.

But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.

The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong."

Spot-on as usual, there is Mark Steyn.

"...for all the talk of “reaching out” to America’s allies, you get the feeling the foreign pages are one big yawnsville to them. In the old days on Broadway, they used to have what they called “catalogue songs” – laundry lists of lyrical examples that all went to prove the same point – that “You’re The Top” or that “These Foolish Things Remind Me Of You”. In this case, whatever happens around the world, These Geopolitical Things Remind Me Of Bush."

And of course you should always be reading Victor Davis Hanson.

"...we have had this debate over competing therapeutic and tragic visions of human nature here at home since the 1960s. We are still arguing over carrot-and-stick dilemmas, such as incarceration versus rehabilitation or workfare in place of welfare.

But now the debate is not over public policy, but rather our very survival — as we struggle to find the proper way of defeating a vicious enemy without losing our liberal soul."