Posted on 09/06/2005 12:18:05 AM PDT by Mount Athos
The physical devastation caused by hurricane Katrina has painfully revealed the moral devastation of our times that has led to mass looting in New Orleans, assaults on people in shelters, the raping of girls, and shots being fired at helicopters that are trying to rescue people.
Forty years ago, an electric grid failure plunged New York and other northeastern cities into a long blackout. But law and order prevailed. Ordinary citizens went to intersections to direct traffic. People helped each other. After the blackout was over, this experience left many people with an upbeat spirit about their fellow human beings.
Another blackout in New York, years later, was much uglier. And what has been happening now in New Orleans is uglier still. Is there a trend here?
Fear, grief, desperation or despair would be understandable in people whose lives have been devastated by events beyond their control. Regret might be understandable among those who were warned to evacuate before the hurricane hit but who chose to stay. Yet the word being heard from those on the scene is "angry."
That may be a clue, not only to the breakdown of decency in New Orleans, but to a wider degeneration in American society in recent decades.
Why are people angry? And at whom?
Apparently they are angry at government officials for not having rescued them sooner, or taken care of them better, or for letting law and order break down.
No doubt the inevitable post mortems on this tragic episode will turn up many cases where things could have been done better. But who can look back honestly at his own life without seeing many things that could have been done better?
Just thinking about all the mistakes you have made over a lifetime can be an experience that is humbling, if not humiliating.
When all is said and done, government is ultimately just human beings -- politicians, judges, bureaucrats. Maybe the reason we are so often disappointed with them is that they have over-promised and we have been gullible enough to believe them.
Government cannot solve all our problems, even in normal times, much less during a catastrophe of nature that reminds man how little he is, despite all his big talk.
The most basic function of government, maintaining law and order, breaks down when floods or blackouts paralyze the system.
During good times or bad, the police cannot police everybody. They can at best control a small segment of society. The vast majority of people have to control themselves.
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.
Now we see what those do-it-yourself standards amount to in the ugliness and anarchy of New Orleans.
In a world where people flaunt their "independence," their "right" to disregard moral authority, and sometimes legal authority as well, the tragedy of New Orleans reminds us how utterly dependent each one of us is for our very lives on millions of other people we don't even see.
Thousands of people in New Orleans will be saved because millions of other people they don't even know are moved by moral obligations to come to their rescue from all corners of this country. The things our clever sophisticates sneer at are ultimately all that stand between any of us and utter devastation.
Any of us could have been in New Orleans. And what could we have depended on to save us? Situational ethics? Postmodern philosophy? The media? The lawyers? The rhetoric of the intelligentsia?
No, what we would have to depend on are the very things that are going to save the survivors of hurricane Katrina, the very things that clever people are undermining.
New Orleans can be rebuilt and the levees around it shored up. But can the moral levees be shored up, not only in New Orleans but across America?
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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