Posted on 09/03/2005 6:54:45 AM PDT by RKV
The disaster of New Orleans, unspooling minute by minute on our TV screens, has been wrenching - in one particular way even more gut-twisting than Sept. 11.
You could watch the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and feel horrified at the sheer violence and destruction of it; angry at the murderous evil of Mohammed Atta and the other hijackers; heartbroken at the awful suffering and loss. But there wasn't any cause to feel embarrassed and ashamed.
Those are the emotions evoked by sights of the massive lawlessness in New Orleans in the days after the storm and the inability of anyone to stop it. Katrina unleashed a catastrophe of nearly unimaginable proportions, confronting government at all levels with enormous challenges. That the reaction to the hurricane initially seemed uneven and slow is understandable, but even allowing for the hellish circumstances, the breakdown in civil order has been stunning.
Without order, which government exists to protect, nothing else is possible. Not even rescue operations, as New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has learned. On Wednesday night, as the city descended into an urban dystopia straight out of the 1981 film ''Escape From New York,'' he had to command nearly all the city's 1,500 police officers to focus on re-establishing law and order instead of saving endangered people.
Everyone understands desperate people getting food or water by any means possible. Plundering tennis shoes and TVs, as a small thuggish minority has done, is another matter. And the problem is that there is no such thing as a little chaos. Once a climate of disorder is set, it has a logic of its own. First, it was stealing tennis shoes, then it was taking potshots at a helicopter arriving to evacuate people from the Superdome. Goons stole a bus from a nursing home and threatened its residents. Rescue workers report that rocks and bottles have been thrown at them and shots fired their way.
Unfortunately, the urban revival that had swept much of the country mostly left New Orleans behind. The atmosphere of lawfulness that stood New York City in good stead after 9/11 and during the 2003 blackout - although those were much less far-reaching disasters was never established. The city never had a Rudy Giuliani. Even as murder rates continued to decline in other cities in recent years, the murder rate in New Orleans crept up. The police were plagued by allegations of corruption and brutality, and, according to The Associated Press, only had ''3.14 officers per 1,000 residents - less than half the rate in Washington, D.C.''
Law enforcement, of course, is primarily a state and local responsibility, but in the age of the 24-hour news cycle, people look to the federal government and the president to solve any problem on their TV screens. Already the question is being asked if the feds could have jumped in sooner (the National Guard is now arriving in force). If President Bush pays a political price for the images of lawlessness that have played out in New Orleans, it will be the second time looting has hurt his cause.
The other, of course, was in Baghdad in 2003. It is a matter of consensus now that the rip-the-place-apart looting in the initial days after the fall of Saddam Hussein set the occupation off on the wrong foot. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld explained the looting away at the time as the natural exuberance of a newly liberated people. One wonders: Has anyone in the administration read their Hobbes? Or does he not make the ''compassionate conservative'' reading list?
New Orleans has provided a corrosive lesson about government. At all levels, government is overbearing and nagging, paying for people's prescription drugs and telling us whether we can smoke in restaurants or not. But when it comes to its most elemental task of maintaining order and protecting property, it might not be up to the task when it is needed most.
Keep that in mind and buy a gun, just in case.
I would use an M-16; the ammo's easier to find.
All we managed to do was defer Judgement Day, not avoid it.
You think the response to Katrina demonstrates America's nobility? I'd say all the hurricane did was wash away the thin whitewash of civilization and expose a rotting core beneath.
The response from the government and the American people has been and will continue to be outstanding.
You're buying the media spin.
I'm beginning to wonder that if maybe in the long run if this isn't the best thing to ever happen to Louisiana. IF THESE PEOPLE NEVER COME BACK, the criminals for sure, AND the poor hopefully can go to a better place where there is a better work ethic, rebuild their lives, get a better education than what NO had to offer, get jobs and prosper
Let's hope everything works out for the best. Some good can come of every tragedy.
a man who raped a child was killed by the crowds?
Thats about the best news I've heard all day
Some of them, sure. But not all. Far, far from all ...
You're buying the media spin.
Even when the stories are eyewitness reports posted here on FR? Even when the stories are posted by bloggers who just managed to escape the indifference, the incompetence, and the devasation? No, I think you're living in denial.
I hate to say it, IronJack, but you make a good point. The whole nation has been intimidated by the PC crowd. Maybe the scenes coming from NOLA will make many naive people wake up and see just what our welfare state has bred. Its a breeder class thats useless for anything productive and it just keeps replicating itself generation after generation.
Prior to the so-called "Great Society", these same people were, for the most part, hard working, religious people and were law abiding helpful Citizens even though they were segregated.
LBJ was the worst President of the 20th Century.
Life is no tougher these days than it was then. But when FDR decided that the Great Depression was something he could legislate away, he created a philosophy that has become almost a cultural axiom: the government should DO something.
We could have stopped it in 1933. But we didn't. And that cancer took hold and grew until it became Watts and Detroit and Philadelphia and Atlanta and every other city that has a decayed core of chronic parasites feeding on its vitality. Even now, the blame-shifting and apologias are starting. No one will rise to shut up Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. The "authorities" will all quiver and quake when these charlatans strut onto the stage. And they'll humbly shuffle their feet and smile apologetically when the hucksters dump all the blame on them. Then the good Revs will jump in their Learjets and scoot off to some new venue where the lights are brighter.
Meanwhile, the goons they've bred all these years abandon all pretense of civilization and prowl the sodden, deserted streets like packs of wolves.
bttt
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