Exactly! 9/11 would have been much worse if we New York City residents (I work a few blocks from the WTC on Wall Street) had as ineffectual mayor as Nagin, and as ineffectual governor as Blanco. I was just trying to imagine what 9/11 would have been like if the most ineffectual mayor in my memory, Abe Beame, had been at the helm (and even in my most fevered imaginings I can't imagine any of our previous governors -- including Mario the Pious -- being as ineffectual as Blanco!). In addition, the WTC was in the financial district which had very few residents. The one relatively large complex in the neighborhood, Battery Park City, was home to an affluent population with the resources to temporarily relocate. If the WTC was closer to low-income housing projects, whose residents did not have the means to easily relocate, that situation would not have been the model of "how government should operate"!
I am reminded of Thomas Hobbes's theory of the "state of nature" -- that life in such conditions is "nasty, brutish and short." The intervenor, that is supposed to mitigate the state of nature, is government and the deal is we relinquish a measure of autonomy for a measure of security.
The problem with the "welfare state" (as it existed in New Orleans) is that these recipients have no idea of what "relinquishing autonomy" is -- they do what they want, when they want -- so they want total autonomy and total security. Guess what? Thomas Hobbes had it right close to 400 years ago!
Get over yourselves, whiners, crybabies and girlie men of FR, it was ever thus.
Right on, HateBill.
You echoed the sentiments I posted earlier in my psychotic rant in the thread linked here (Post #48) . . .