Posted on 09/05/2005 12:24:44 AM PDT by etcetera
What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. And they don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.
(Excerpt) Read more at tiadaily.com ...
It took four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because it also took me four long days to figure out what was going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster.
If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.
Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists—myself included—did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.
But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.
The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.
The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over four days last week. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.
The man-made disaster is the welfare state.
For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in an emergency—indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expect from a Third World country.
When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11).
So what explains the chaos in New Orleans?
To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description from a Washington Times story:
"Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on.
"The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire....
"Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders.
" 'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,' she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.' "
The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows a SWAT team with rifles and armored vests riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.
What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to speed away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Superdome?
Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them?
My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage one night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.)
What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"—the informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels—gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of those who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then told me that early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails—so they just let many of them loose. [Update: I have been searching for news reports on this last story, but I have not been able to confirm it. Instead, I have found numerous reports about the collapse of the corrupt and incompetent New Orleans Police Department; see here and here.]
There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa.
There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit—but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals—and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep—on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.
All of this is related, incidentally, to the incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. In a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters—not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.
No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism.
What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. And they don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.
But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.
People living in piles of their own trash, while petulantly complaining that other people aren't doing enough to take care of them and then shooting at those who come to rescue them—this is not just a description of the chaos at the Superdome. It is a perfect summary of the 40-year history of the welfare state and its public housing projects.
The welfare state—and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages—is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting.
They don't know what a history book is!
Part of the article: People living in piles of their own trash, while petulantly complaining that other people aren't doing enough to take care of them and then shooting at those who come to rescue them—this is not just a description of the chaos at the Superdome. It is a perfect summary of the 40-year history of the welfare state and its public housing projects.
Source: TIA Daily -- September 2, 2005
Thanks Governor Perry.
Yep, what we are seeing from New Orleans is Lyndon Johnson's Great(gag)Society in full flower. I'm afraid that New Orleans won't be the end of it ,either. America is coming apart at the seams, thanks to generations of conditioning(or call it brainwashing) by the government,media and academia. It will get to the point we will have to give the country a new name: Moronica.
Yep, what we are seeing from New Orleans is Lyndon Johnson's Great(gag)Society in full flower. I'm afraid that New Orleans won't be the end of it ,either. America is coming apart at the seams, thanks to generations of conditioning(or call it brainwashing) by the government,media and academia. It will get to the point we will have to give the country a new name: Moronica.
you do wonder how quickly the Astrodome will become a cesspool, and how quickly crime will rise in Houston.
This will be the next big story of the disaster. All these cities that have risen to the occasion to provide humanitarian relief will get a fine thank you for their efforts- tens of thousands more added to their welfare rolls, burdening their already taxed public schools and more crime. How long do think these people will be happy to sit in domes and shelters day after day, week after week knowing they have nothing and have no home to even go to. They will start to yell that they are not being treated well enough, the food isn't good enough, they haven't gotten their checks, etc... And above all, where are they all going to GO without any means or skills to assimilate back into their communities? I'm telling you, it's going to get ugly- FAST.
The welfare state—and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages—is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting.
BTTT!!!!
Thanks for posting. Excellent analysis of what happened.
Funny you don't see the same whiners in the other two States where the damage may be even worse than in NO. We had four (4) hurricanes in our State last year, did we see any whiners from the local officials? NO!
A curse!!!
Best post I've read all day..and this article was the best one I've read all weekend. When the rescue operation is over, ALL aspects better be on the table for coping with the next inevitable disaster, including reducing the dependency on the government to provide.
One of my friends who was stuck in New Orleans managed to get a group of people together and decided to escape from Mid-City. They took a shopping cart from one of the Wal-Marts whose goods were liberated and redistributed to an eager public, filled it full of food, water, and their personal effects (including several cats, and started on their way out).
On the way they saw uniformed cops robbing stores at gunpoint for steroes and other nonessentials, gang members driving by and spraying anyone unlucky enough to be on the streets with automatic fire, and the corpse of an elderly customer of hers(beaten to death with bricks) piled among about a dozen others. I can't even begin to imagine what other kind of horrifying encounters they had, and frankly, do not want to.
Although they nearly died several times throughout their exodus, they managed to make it to Laplace (a town 30 mi away) with everyone still alive. I am amazed by the harrowing things they have encountered and how they managed to overcome them in order to survive.
I guess my point is that even if the news does seem eager to point out 250-lb whiners who bitch at the fact that they've had nothing but water and MREs for the past two or three days, there are some real heroes to come out of this crisis with not only good convictions but the will and courage to follow through on them. Pity that the presence of so much evil threatens to overshadow their accomplishments. I, for one, am in awe.
Alternative Headline
Welfarism: The Silent Genocide
Thanks for your post - it was a fascinating read. I do wish the reporters would show the story in full and not just harp on the fact that it took too long to get the people out of those 2 areas - when the city at large has had MANY more forces at work, and heroes like you mention who saved others despite harrowing circumstances.
Forgot to add a link
http://www.batcafe.com/batblog/
That's them. Dateline interviewed them and then left without giving them a ride. Asshats.
Nerdgirl, as a graduate of LSUSD in 1976 I fully agree with you. Before moving to NOLA I grew up in Baton Rouge. When I retired from the USAF the last place I wanted to move was back to south LA. Interestingly enough I ended up just a few miles up the road from you in Wasilla, Alaska.
Over the years I have had the chance to go to NOLA for professional meetings and most of the time I passed. The last time I went was in 1998 for a meeting at the convention center. Though the food was incredible as always the city was even more filthy and dangerous than I remembered. THis article has finally spoken that which cannot be spoken and I for one think it ought to be shouted from the rooftops.
Nice to hear from a fellow Alaskan! I think living here makes you particularly incapable of relating to citizens who expect so much from the government - I guess there's a lot of that attitude among some native groups, who have unfortunately lost many of their traditions that helped them survive for so long in the arctic. But the average Alaskan mindset is one of self survival - just keep the government out of my business - as long as they aren't stranded on McKinley though - lol.
Going back over the years I've had a similar feeling - while I love the atmosphere, food, etc - in certain areas - just flying in and driving into the city you think "man was this place this bad when I lived here?"
And as for the 3rd world angle, I've lived in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Argentina - and NOLA BEFORE Katrina was every bit as 3rd world as parts of any of those countries. The media likes to act horrified that we have 3rd world conditions here - that's just plain ignorance or selective reporting.
for later
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