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.
I agree completely. Say "Welcome to Texas. Now sit down and listen up! This is how it is. We don't put up with that sh*t they let you get away with in N.O."
The ones who died are with the father now and praying for the rest of us poor sots left here.
Even to Mary Jo Kopechne?
Sure is weird to read YOUR "about" page on a Hurricane Katrina /New Orleans related thread...
Prayers for ALL!
So you want forced slave labor to reconstruct a dead city. That's insane on several levels.
Justin Darr is the Managing Editor of www.RepublicanVoices.orgAnd that's why nobody is gonna hear what he's saying, except those who already agree with him.
He's preachin' to the choir.
But the entrenched government entitlement bureaucracy ain't gonna listen or change.
And, the MSM ain't gonna pay this "republican voice" no mind.
He's pissin' in the wind.
Yeah.
He sure made emergency plans to get his sorry ass out of town quick.
Screw the rest of the suckers, eh Mr. Mayor?
You would think that in a major port city like NO there would be hundreds of boats or water transport available in cases of emergencies. In truth there were hardly any boats. No boats, no emergency plans, no adequate law enforcement, no provisions, no decisive actions. We find out that NO had thousands of school buses that could have been used to get the people out. Why weren't they used?
The whole disgraceful blame can be placed on the thoroughly incompetent state and city governments and NOT!!! President Bush. The president is not supposed to be a nanny for state and city authorities.
Gen. Patton would have smacked this mayor's helmet off.
"Water, water, everywhere, nor any a drop to drink." Things New Orleans residents would have learned had they listened in school: 1) There was a lot of potable water stored in water heaters and toilet tanks, 2) there was plenty of wood to make a fire with which to boil water, 3) a gallon of Clorox will purify 3,800 gallons of water, and 4) iodine crystals from the drug store will also purify water.
I just can't believe all these people can be absorbed into Houston.
BTTT
Excellent post. New Orleans is a unique place. Things get done by favors there. If you do something for me then I will do something for you. This happens on a grand scale in that city and is the way the city run. The city has hisorically been run like a fourth world country and the people who lived there were happy with that. When a crisis hits it becomes every person for themselves since there was never a government, other than on paper, anyway.
Absolutely right on target with this piece. Both the right and the left have coddled Blacks in our society. We allow the left to teach them to hate whites and believe that they are being discriminated against therefore its ok to murder, rape and steal. Weak RINOs say nothing about their leaders hate filled speaches against America and especially white America. Businesses foster diversity groups which only create more tension and hate further dividing us along racial/skin color lines. For anyone who thinks that most blacks hate whites then I suggest that you go volunteer at a mostly black school and see what happens to the few token whites who attend - time for us to wake up and start calling out the left (and the republicans for thinks like attending LaRaza conference) as racists. Power for the left is in dividing this nation - we have failed to fight back fearing that we would be called a name - no more.
Slave labor? Pay em a wage for God's sake.
Well, being as he's the only source of this and he's a screwball, I'd say "no".
You crack me up. It's a big shock that in the U.S. there is a hostile underclass, a percentage of which is murderous. I live in a major city. If law and order fail, (any more than they have) I am prepared to defend myself. It's like, "oh no there are evil murderous thugs in America supported by a passive aggressive culture with a chip on its shoulder." LOL.
I don't know why people are shocked. Anyone could look out the window and see the potential for full scale anarchy, even just two days into a disaster, if police powers were removed from vast segments of many of or major cities. No brainer. Where's the shock?? (Is what I am asking myself).
bump
bttt
And each bus could have made several trips. There was enough time and warning.
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