Public safety has always been recognized as a legitimate governmental concern. This is not an ideological question.
The government does not exist to protect me from myself.
Nor does it exist to prevent me from making poor decisions.
Nor does it exist to conscript some Americans into paying the bills for other Americans.
These people had every opportunity to move away from New Orleans and into Kansas where they would be much safer from hurricanes.
The bottom line is that MOST Americans are socialists, but just refuse to see it as they come up with all sorts of morally relativistic excuses for the government to act outside its proper role.
Please elaborate as succinctly as you can what you see as the proper role of government.
My opinion: government exists to secure the rights of the people, and to protect us from force and/or fraud by another.
In this case, as the issue at hand is a natural disaster, I don't really see where the federal government has any role to play whatsoever, since I can't find the part in our Constitution about charity and disaster relief. Two roles for local/state authorities in this instance would be to prosecute any looter who may arrive on the scene, and to make sure that insurance companies who have obligations to pay damages actually pay them.
I think that was his objection. Where exactly is the line between public and private safety? Does a governmental agency have the right to force you from your property? If we are truly free, aren't free to be colossally stupid? Say, throwing a beach party in the face of a hurricane? Where does the goverment's reach stop?
ditto