Posted on 09/02/2005 9:49:33 PM PDT by Lando Lincoln
Two days. 48 hours. 2,880 minutes. This was all the time it took for the fabric of 6000 years of civilization to unravel in New Orleans. Streets which just last week were lined with the fans of Blues clubs and theaters are now patrolled by gangs of what in any other country would be called terrorists looking for their next innocent victim or store front to pillage. Rapes and gang wars in the Superdome, gun fire at rescue helicopters, and the efforts to search and rescue trapped survivors of hurricane Katrina have been abandoned in a near hopeless effort to restore some semblance of public order. Think of it. In just two days time, authorities have been forced to desert innocent people to almost certain death because New Orleans has become unsafe for rescue operations. Two days.
How could this have happened so quickly? Early reports of looting where portrayed by the media as desperate, hungry people breaking into grocery stores. In my opinion, this is not looting but survival. However, as the full scope of events has become clearer, it is evident that the mayhem in New Orleans is not a result of trapped residents trying to stay alive, but a carnival atmosphere where the bodies of the dead are pushed aside in order to steal their stereos.
I was originally going to write nothing about hurricane Katrina. Times of national tragedy are no time for partisanship. However, what is happening in New Orleans goes beyond the simple red state/ blue state debate. This disaster has exposed something putrid in our society. For this to happen so quickly indicates that there is something fundamentally flawed in our culture that should not be brushed under the rug by political correctness or blamed on any simple politician or political party. What is happening in New Orleans can and will happen again unless we take sober steps to first understand why these events have occurred, and then act to prevent them.
These are the politically correct facts as we know them. Almost everyone who could evacuate New Orleans before the hurricane did. Those who stayed where the very poor or ill who did not have the means to leave.
The reality is that the poor residents of the New Orleans could have evacuated the flood zone on a public bus before the hurricane for about the cost of a bottle of water. The total disabled population of New Orleans who might not have been able to evacuate is estimated at around 55,000 residents. So, the question must be asked why up to half a million people did not evacuate the city. The sad answer is that many of these residents remained because they where waiting for the government to aid them.
Many trapped in New Orleans right now are in a state of shock. They expected the nanny state which provides them with housing, medical care, food, and education to also come forward and provide them with the means of escaping a natural disaster. When a state of emergency was declared in August 26th , they waited. When the inbound lanes of the highways around New Orleans where rerouted outbound to allow for faster evacuation by road, they waited. If things where really that bad, the government would come through for them and tell them where to go, what to do, and provide the means to make it happen. Many residents in New Orleans remained because they have been so indoctrinated into the idea that they will be taken care of by the government that they are incapable to looking out for themselves.
Now the government has failed them. In a culture where all the comforts of life have been provided to people as entitlements, their sudden absence has unleashed a violent backlash against the society these people feel has let them down. In other words, if some people do not get what they feel they are entitled to get, then something unfair must have happened, so now they have the right to go out and take it.
Let me stress again, these people are not out just trying to get baby food and Grandma’s insulin. They are stealing electronics, guns, furniture, beer trucks, and Nikes. Along with the end of social service entitlements has come the end of the rules of behavior these entitlements require. So, if the government is not giving you anything, some of these people feel that they do not have to follow the laws of civilized society.
The nanny state has created a class of people in America not only unable to take care of their own needs, but incapable to existing within normal society. In your neighborhood, laws and peaceful coexistence are not maintained by government or the police, but by the people themselves. You obey the law and live a civil existence because you understand that this is the only way you will have a good life. You feel that way because you have worked hard and are unwilling to jeopardize everything you have earned by acting foolishly. But those who have always been given everything and told that everything they do wrong is a result of their being a victim, there is no similar prohibition.
New Orleans is a warning to us all. We must change our culture from one of entitlement to one of responsibility now, or we may have no culture left in the future.
Justin Darr is the Managing Editor of www.RepublicanVoices.org and a freelance writer living in the Philadelphia area. He is published in over 80 publications across North America, Europe, and in the Far East. Justin Darr is a proud member of the Moveoff Network http://moveoff.net.
This is one hell of a cruel God. Sure killed lots of people.
If God can do this stuff, if all this stuff "happens for a reason" then what's the point of living life?
Stuff happens because it happens.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
Half a million people stayed? What was the population of New Orleans?
How about his math?
"The total disabled population of New Orleans who might not have been able to evacuate is estimated at around 55,000 residents. So, the question must be asked why up to half a million people did not evacuate the city."
I just checked the 2000 census for New Orleans. Population: 484,674.
So the total population is less than half-a-million . The author makes good points and he is right on about the side-effects of the Democrats' socialist welfare state, but he harms his own credibility with his sloppiness.
I count over 200 buses in that picture. At 50 people a bus that is at least 10,000 people.
Has anyone heard if the CANNABILISM reported today by Randall Robertson, liberal black activist and president of Transafrica, is true?
Has anyone heard if the CANNABILISM reported today by Randall Robertson, liberal black activist and president of Transafrica, is true?
Apparently we're all just three meals away from anarchy?
Mayor Nagin was sitting in a cushy hotel up in Baton Rouge while he was b#tching that the Feds weren't helping.
Regardless of what happens, New Orleans won't be as large of a city as it was.
The brains of the city are gone. What I mean is the entrepreneurs, business owners, wealthier citizens evacuated. By the time the city is ready to rebuild, many of these people will be settled in new communities, whether it be Baton Rouge, Houston, or Cincinnati or wherever, working new jobs, running new businesses, living new lives.
Stop the lies the city of NO has/had city buses, school buses, city owned cars, dump trucks , tractors, motorcycles, police cars, prison vans and buses, ride on lawn mowers, trains all at Mayor C. Ray Nagin disposal and he did not use them. Hes got a helicopter and used it for nothing but sight seeing. He's The new Nero playing his lyre while his city died!!!!!!!!!!Mayor C. Ray "Nero" Nagin the Famous Mayor who "fiddled while New Orleans sunk into chaos"
Yeah. Well the filthy criminal element of N.O. is being spread to all those cities you mention as well just like mustard seeds.
I think 55k is more the number that stayed behind.
However, he could have meant that half a million in the entire metro area stayed behind.
The city itself is 484,000 but the metropolitan area is about 1.4 million.
Funny though that the suburbs are all dry-it's just NO itself that is still under water.
Maybe, but he clearly says "the city".
"So, the question must be asked why up to half a million people did not evacuate the city."
bttt
Leadership. UP and DOWN the line. Every elected offical failed. Every hired public safety figure failed. The people of the local area selected these authority figures, and didn't care if they could perform if called upon (look at Rudy G of New York...he was expected to deliver, and he did). This is not a unique situation. The city should have been able to run the emergency situation for about 48 hours, until state and fed folks arrived on the scene. And the city couldn't deliver. I'd say that martial law in NO ought to be a permanent case...they can't take care of themselves, then let the president select a governor general of the city to take charge. Replace the police department with military police and let them set young immature punks into place. Public safety on any given evening ought to be an absolute.
Well at least Texas has the death penalty and isn't afraid to use it! I suggest this point is reinforced to the newest citizens of the Great Republic of Texas!
Kill A Commie For Mommie
Seven Dead Monkeys Page O Tunes
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.