Posted on 09/06/2005 12:18:05 AM PDT by Mount Athos
You do not need to be angry to Loot or be a criminal, just selfish and amoral.
In fact, they looked quite gleeful as they were looting.
You ping me on tons of stuff, and I never ping you, so here is my first ping to you ever
I'm rather excited at the prospect of rebuilding New Orleans. (READ BEFORE FLAMING)
There is absolutely no need to fall into despair over the fact that human nature tends toward the dark side of decency... The destruction of New Orleans was tragic, in much the same way that the Twin Towers on 9/11 were a tragedy. Human life was unnecessarily lost. On 9/11 it was terrorists and Katrina was an Force of Nature beyond our control.
Rebuilding New Orleans could be a testament to the American spirit. Our nation was built by people who challenged nature itself to do its worst, and kept on going on to build one of the most powerful countries on the planet. The wilderness of our country came close to overwhelming settlers time and time again, yet they continued onward. The whole idea behind the colonization of this continent was an epitome to the spirit of hope that can be found in the taming of a new land.
Frankly, rebuilding New Orleans could become a testament of American unity. All we have to do is make sure it isn't rebuilt as stupidly the second time around. We have 200+ years of engineering accomplishments behind us. It is time we used that experience to design a city from the ground up. Naturally, the government's role will be in the construction of public infrastructure and zoning, and it will not be involved in subsidizing private construction. Subsidization of private construction would result in buildings in the wrong places, built for the wrong purposes... We've probably all seen examples of governmental efficiency when it comes to micromanaging anything.
Why, in the name of mercy, does anyone want to rebuild this?!?
Let business and industry rebuild New Orleans to suit its needs. Discourage government "visionary" interference in the rebuilding process. Remember Brazilia, the legendary lost city in the Amazon jungle. It bankrupted its country, it was a Marxist architectural fiasco, and nobody wants to live there.
What is our national interest in rebuilding such a place?
Lousiana's ports and refineries are the only things worth spending federal money to repair.
To many, the counter-culture movement of the '60's was a harmless iconoclastic tantrum in a prosperous nation that could easily afford 'most any luxuries--including a good time, rock and roll President.
The wise saw something far more ominous.
The omen foreboded such catastrophes as the New Orleans disaster.
It forebodes much more.
New Orleans is a prelude of things to come if the American people do not wake up, face reality, and reject the folly of the counter-culture movement, the destructive foolishness of the Left and the Democrat Party, and the decadence of Western society that has infected the West like the black plague and, unlike the plage, which merely devastated the West, portends its total destruction.
New Orleans is America's alarm clock going off!
And it's loud enough to awaken the rest of the world as well.
That is where the great moral traditions of a society come in -- those moral traditions that it is so hip to sneer at, so cute to violate, and that our very schools undermine among the young, telling them that they have to evolve their own standards, rather than following what old fuddy duddies like their parents tell them.
Sowell nails it!
Unfortunately, many have accepted--even welcomed--all this. And in the land of pioneers who carved the greatest nation the world has ever known from a wilderness, armed with nothing more than liberty and their own hands!
Several years ago, a news "reporter" interviewed a Catholic priest concerning a lawsuit filed against the Catholic Church by the family of a man who had committed suicide; the family contended that the Church was responsible for the man's suicide since he had been counciled by a different priest.
The priest, in the interview, denied that the Church was responsible for the man's suicide.
"But if the Church is not responsible," the "reporter" asked, "Who is?"
"The man is responsible for his own suicide," the priest replied.
The "reporter" looked like he had been doused with a bucket of icewater. This was the most astonishing thing he had ever heard.
Of course, you're right.
San Francisco was rebuilt after the 1906 earthquake. Germany and Japan were rebuilt after World War II.
The difference today is the steady drumbeat of Leftist propaganda undermining the American spirit.
The American Dream--and the rebuilding of New Orleans--would be easier and more certain if the drumbeat were one of optimism, self-confidence, puissance, self-reliance, moral strength, the strength of liberty, the magnificence of the United States itself, and the other virtues that made America so great.
No flame from me: I agree with you.
Yet more wisdom and eloquence from NaughtiusMaximus. (Note tagline.)
During a recent visit, a relative from a Left-wing enclave, who seems to have bought the party line, recoiled in horror when I revealed that I have guns for self-protection. (I do not hunt and do not allow it on my property; my wife and I are vegetarians. The relative, incidentally, is not.)
"I think such things should be left to the police," she gasped.
"Out here? In The Middle of Nowhere?" my wife replied. "I don't think so."
America's greatest living intellectual strikes again!
Did your relative get it?
No. If she were capable of getting it, she would have gotten it long ago.
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