Mickey Kaus points to some interesting focus group data, which seems to suggest that Americans have returned to the historic fallback position of blaming black people for everything, this time concerning the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina. Kaus puts his annoying Lord Haw-Haw spin on the topic, but his underlying point is true: that no American political party can win at the ballot box if it relies on the compassion of the American public for the downtrodden. Ours is a selfish nation.

The individualism that fuels the American Dream requires some segment of the public to be exploited. Historically, that role has fallen upon African-Americans, although immigrant groups have also filled the role nicely, and it has been a cornerstone of conservative/libertarian political thought that they deserve their exploitation and poverty (nowadays, of course, it is spoken more in terms of code than in any explicit manner). The shocking scenes and wrenching poverty we witnessed from New Orleans last September temporarily jolted the public, but it takes a lot more than levees collapsing to change ingrained habits of many decades; urban slums, redlining, and "benign neglect" didn't go away just because of temporary outrage over Selma or Birmingham.

Poor people don't vote, at least not in numbers large enough to matter, and they don't otherwise impose their political will upon the rest of society. Their interests don't count, their voices are silent, and the liberal Democrats who represent them tend to do so as a matter of public charity, rather than as the type of constituent service most politicians perform. Events like the '92 riots in Los Angeles initially raise questions about what type of people we are to tolerate such poverty, but inevitably shift over time to what savages "those people" are. It's easier, and cheaper on the wallet, to dehumanize others, rather than actually doing something worthwhile on their behalf. It's the American Way, and liberals better understand that if they want to win elections in the Red States.