There’s nothing conservatives love more than individual liberty. They’ve based their political philosophy around giving individuals responsibility over their own lives. Their hero is the rugged individualist who builds a life, a company, or a whole world with his own two hands.

The three sweetest words to a conservative are: “I built that.” The sweetest four words are: “There is no society.”

There’s a lot to admire about such a worldview, but there are times — like these — when rugged individualism seems hopelessly naive.

Trump praises Texas for Harvey effort, will visit this week

There are no conservatives in waist-deep water. Like an atheist in a foxhole, Texas conservatives are praying to Washington for help. Those trapped in the flood in Houston realize that they depend on the kindness of strangers. In Houston, no man is an island. A disaster of this magnitude swamps the capacity of the private nonprofit sector to respond, much less random strangers with a boat.

These are the times that try conservatives’ souls. They’d really like to think that individual liberty and responsibility is the answer to every problem, but every now and then it occurs to them that there are some problems that demand a collective solution. Natural disasters, public health, the common defense, the general welfare and other public goods.

When you are high and dry, it’s easy to tell other people that they should rely on their own wits. That they should lift themselves up and not rely on a handout. But when it’s your neighbors who are trapped in a disaster not of their own making, when it’s your constituents who have lost everything, when you are up to your neck in alligators, it becomes almost impossible to maintain the fiction that the world is a better place when each of us is utterly on our own.

Houston is a great metaphor for this conflict between the individual and society. Houston famously has lax zoning regulations, just as conservative doctrine demands. Property rights are paramount, and that’s allowed the city to spread out willy-nilly. Want to build on wetlands? Fine, go ahead. Put a housing development in the flood plain? Sure! Bulldoze the prairie grasses that hold the rainfall? Why not? Pave the whole county? Of course, we need the roads!

Must read: The Texas Tribune’s prescient series: Boomtown, Flood Town

The sprawl helped Houston grow. The city has jobs and affordable homes. But the sprawl also contributed to the disaster.

Opinion Journal: Natural Disasters in America

Houston is also a city built on hydrocarbons, which not only provide the local economy with its main industry, but also provide the gasoline that allows a sprawling city to function, and the natural gas that powers the air conditioners that are essential to the city’s very existence.

And, of course as we now know, the burning of those hydrocarbons is trapping the heat of the sun, just as the floodwaters are trapping the good people of Houston. It’s heating up the atmosphere of our planet — and the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Warm water spawns more frequent massive storms. Warm water evaporates easier, packing those storm clouds with the rain that’s now drowning Houston. It’s not a coincidence that heavy rainstorms and more extreme weather of all kinds are becoming more common; it’s just physics.

The crisis in Houston has led to a crisis of conscience among some conservatives. The line they drew in the sand about funding the government just got washed away by a $100 billion storm. The budget cuts they supported to fund tax cuts or a Wall suddenly don’t seem so inconsequential.

The floods may open their eyes to the value of taking collective action not just after a storm hits, but also beforehand. Maybe they’ll begin to appreciate federal agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that provide the warnings that save lives. And the Federal Emergency Management Agency that helps cities and towns prepare for the inevitable, and that helps us recover and rebuild afterward. Not to mention the Coast Guard.

Emergency Crews Rescue Those Stranded in Harvey Flooding

Golly, it might be good if our vital transportation and infrastructure networks were resilient enough to handle the intense weather that’s in our near future. While we’re at it, let’s update the flood zone maps so we know where the dangers lie, and so we can avoid building where nature tells us not to.

And let’s not bury our heads in the sand any longer about the threat of global warming. It’s not a hoax. It threatens all mankind, and all mankind needs to take collective action to learn what the dangers are, to research solutions, and to act to prevent the worst from happening.

The people who poured the concrete of Houston didn’t mean to make the flooding worse. The people who drove 30 miles to work every day didn’t mean to heat up the planet. The people who turned on the air conditioning to beat the heat didn’t mean to spawn killer storms. They were just pursuing their dreams. Individually, they were being responsible.

But individual responsibility isn’t adequate when we face a common danger. We need to work together, just as the public first-responders and private volunteers are working together in Houston to save lives. We can’t afford to live as if nobody else exists anymore.