Before you read the rest of this let me say that I know that emotions are running high in America right now, but that said I think we’re all going to have some strong convictions as a result of the national trauma we’ve experienced over the last week.

In a post I wrote a couple of days ago I said that I’m ready to get busy working so that our next round of elections get us a better set of leaders than our current crop, leaders that can make sure our government actually does the bare minimum of providing protection, care and comfort in a time of crisis.  (Please note that if I lived in Louisiana I’d be working, after things have settled down, to get rid of everyone from bottom to top, but since I don’t I’m going to focus on those I can actually vote for.  The leadership has failed at all levels here.) Well, it looks like there are some other online writers who feel the same way.  Here’s the list of those I’ve come across, some liberal and some conservative.  I’ll update if I find more.  It is followed by some quotes I found to be enlightening or thought provoking:

• Fred Wilson (A VC)
• Rick Segal (The Post Money Value)
• Dave Winer (Scripting News)
• Doc Searls (The Doc Searls Weblog)
• Jeff Jarvis (Buzz Machine)
• Dan Gillmor (Bayosphere)
• David Brooks (NY Times)

Here are some quotes:

"When the blaming stops and
the fixing truly begins, we’ll need more than our government
organizations to step forward. As citizens, and as groups of citizens,
will need to do what government simply can’t do.

Yes, we need bureaucracies. But bureaucracies can’t imagine anything. Including predictable acts of God.

People, on the other hand, can.

In the War on Error, people will need to take the lead. Governments will need to follow or get out of the way."

—Doc Searls

The twin blows of 9/11 and Katrina are a wake up call for our
country.  We aren’t all that.  We are humans just like all the other
humans living on planet earth.  We are vulnerable like everyone else.
We may be be a "superpower" but what is that worth if we can’t protect
our own citizens?

I hope and believe that we are on the cusp of a new political
order.  We’ve had the liberal excesses of the democrat’s run from the
depression through Vietnam.  We’ve had the conservative excesses of the
republican’s run from Vietman through Iraq.

It’s time we get back to electing people to govern who know
something about leading, operating, and managing.  We need pragmatic
moderates who make the hard decisions without caring about the
political impact. We need civil servants in the mold of George
Washington, Teddy Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower.  We need people who
care about the details of governing rather than the details of getting
elected.

–Fred Wilson

The ultimate donation every American can make is at the ballot box.
We need a gov’t filled with people that care and put caring about
people above everything else. This isn’t a political party issue,
rather an issue at the individual level.

When you go to the ballot box and before you make that pick, just ask yourself this:

“If I was in trouble from a 9/11 or Katrina situation, would this
person care? Would they go bananas with making sure I and my fellow
Americans were taken care of?”

Put aside all others issues because this one really matters. It realy can “happen here” and likely will happen again.

We need a gov’t that cares. It really is that simple.

–Rick Segal

We got the government we deserve, all of us, not just the
Republicans. If we’re going to eschew blame, let’s not blame people
who, like us, voted against someone they didn’t think would be a good
president. There were ample reasons to think that Gore and Kerry would
not have been good for our country.

If we have to blame anyone, let’s take the blame ourselves. We
thought we could get by without getting involved. If ever it was
obvious that we must get involved, now is that time. First there are
people to help, so many, that we must all help. Then there’s a city to
rebuild, and that’s going to require a shift in thinking about the
environment. There’s no maybe about it. On Meet The Press yesterday, a
panel of people who clearly know what they’re talking about said that
New Orleans’s present is the future for all coastal cities. A rising
ocean level has the same effect for coastal cities as dropping land
level (which is what happened in New Orleans). We have to change our
way of life if we want New York, Boston, Houston, Miami, Seattle, San
Francisco and Los Angeles to survive. And that’s true of every coastal
city in every country, not just the United States.

–Dave Winer

I guess I’m one of "those people," (however my voting record is clearly
bi-partisan), but when it comes to fundamental and foundational
convictions, I guess Dave and I prove that political persuasions, like
the earth, can be round. When it comes to philosophical or political
arguments, two people can head in opposite directions and go as far
away from one-another as can be imagined. But when they share certain
fundamental convictions regarding character and responsibility and
mutual-respect, they often find themselves meeting up with one other on
the opposite side of their perceived differences.

–Rex Hammock

CNN skewers
the astonishing claim by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff
— who’s apparently channeling Bush’s earlier lie that no one
anticpated the levee failures — that government planners couldn’t have
predicted the disaster, when exactly these predictions abounded over
the years.

And Knight Ridder looks at the political crony background
of the grossly unqualified — and, as we’ve seen in the past week,
flagrantly incompetent — head of the Federal Emergency Management
Agency, Michael Brown. Naturally, Bush effusively praised this
character during the week, just one more tone-deaf demonstration from
the president.

Now the administration is doing everything it can to shift all responsibility for error
onto the local officials, as the Washington Post reports today. Such
stand-up people, these unnamed characters assassins for a government
that couldn’t pull its act together for long, cruel days, when events
demanded an instant response in the absence of actual planning.

Yes, there’s responsibility to go around in state and local circles. But the federal failings are simply horrendous.

Meanwhile, the heroes keep on working: the police and National Guard
and doctors and nurses and battalions of people who are doing their
jobs at great personal cost. They humble the rest of us. And they shame
the government "leaders" — or would, if shame was a meaningful concept
to the people at the top of the pyramid.

–Dan Gillmor

The first rule of the social fabric – that in times of crisis you
protect the vulnerable – was trampled. Leaving the poor in New Orleans
was the moral equivalent of leaving the injured on the battlefield. No
wonder confidence in civic institutions is plummeting…

Katrina means that the political culture, already sour and
bloody-minded in many quarters, will shift. There will be a reaction.
There will be more impatience for something new. There is going to be
some sort of big bang as people respond to the cumulative blows of bad
events and try to fundamentally change the way things are.

Reaganite conservatism was the response to the pessimism and
feebleness of the 1970’s. Maybe this time there will be a progressive
resurgence. Maybe we are entering an age of hardheaded law and order.
(Rudy Giuliani, an unlikely G.O.P. nominee a few months ago, could now
win in a walk.) Maybe there will be call for McCainist patriotism and
nonpartisan independence. All we can be sure of is that the political
culture is about to undergo some big change.

We’re not really at a tipping point as much as a bursting point. People are mad as hell, unwilling to take it anymore.

–David Brooks