Neumayr: Republic Requires Personal Accountability; Little Shown in New Orleans

A Civilizational Vacuum By George Neumayr Published 9/8/2005 12:09:11 AM A republican form of government presupposes self-government -- the capacity of citizens to govern themselves according to reason -- and does not, if it intends to survive, champion them as "victims" when they don't. But the shocking lack of self-government demonstrated by New Orleanians is the one area of government that our republic's vapid media won't scrutinize in their post-mortems on the city's collapse.

Reporters keep shaking their fists at "the government," as if America were not a republic but a statist autocracy in which remote rulers can snap their fingers and make problems vanish for their subjects. Reporters also keep saying that the government's response last week was "embarrassing." What I find more embarrassing is the media's infantilizing of New Orleans citizens who chose not to evacuate despite loud and obvious warnings. Does personal responsibility mean nothing at this point? Aren't citizens "the government" too? What's disgraceful, and positively dangerous, in a republic that depends on self-reliance is a media that encourages a culture of victimization.

An honest media in a republic not wobbling toward statism would -- while acknowledging that some citizens couldn't evacuate for reasons beyond their control and showing compassion for those who could but foolishly didn't -- stop infantilizing and romanticizing these citizens as "victims" of government indifference.

An honest media would acknowledge that the civilizational vacuum into which New Orleans evaporated last week began with a breakdown of self-government and the absence of civilization's first government -- the family. The absence of fathers, not FEMA, explains the images of women and children stranded in the storm. The absence of culture transmitted through stable families, not the absence of government money (gobs of which have been poured into New Orleans for decades to no effect), explains the Lord of the Flies scenario that took shape not after days of desperate privation but immediately once opportunities for looting presented themselves.

In their scattershot criticism of the federal government's response, the media have demonstrated a childish petulance -- a juvenile demand born of the expectation of instant gratification that the government wave a wand and solve all problems -- while ignoring the most obvious causes contributing to the crisis. Causes that have nothing to do with the structures of this or that government agency. Causes that no faked-up commission in Washington, D.C. can solve. Causes that will produce fresh crises long after the media have pressured the government into the most bogus and superficial fixes.

All of these problems require changes in self-government, not the federal government. But a liberal ideology that refuses to call pathologies by their proper name circumscribes the whole discussion, guaranteeing that these problems will never be solved. Indeed, judging by the frequency of the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons on television this week, those who excused and advanced these pathologies will get new "leadership" chances to compound them.

"We have gotten our media back," Bill Maher and others have burbled, slapping the Anderson Coopers on the back for holding the government "accountable." Actually, the media will hold nobody, save for a few political figures they detest, accountable. They aren't holding looters accountable but giving Al Sharpton a platform to justify the looting. They aren't holding citizens who were told repeatedly to evacuate and didn't evacuate accountable, though their recklessness put a lot of Coast Guardsmen and rescuers at serious risk. Yes, government agencies owe citizens help. But citizens who through their own heedlessness put government rescuers into a near-impossible spot are in no position to gainsay the help.

The storyline of New Orleanians as victims and government responders as villains is just one more outrageous item in the media's voluminous catalogue of victimization. No reasonable calculus of accountability is ever brought to bear in these tales. Whether its needle-using, promiscuous AIDS patients or cigarette smokers or litigants in some self-propelled accident, the media will absolve the person who contributed most directly to the problem of responsibility while searching frantically for some nebulously malign force external to the person to villainize. Yet by their own standards of indulgence -- if they can rationalize the decisionmaking of citizens who are told to evacuate but don't, why aren't they similarly tolerant of inadequate planning by FEMA? -- their ferocious appetite for blame appears utterly capricious.

But worse than that, it is destructive to the life of a republic, rendering individuals passive and derelict at the very moment its survival requires more not less self-government.

Here, I must comment that NEITHER Democrats nor Republicans have gone out of their way to lower those expectations.....

re: Personal Accountability:

The entire foundation of 21st Century Liberalism and the massive "Let Us Get/Give You Free Money" business it supports is rooted on the absence of personal accountability.

It's never your fault. The "gurment" never gave your enough.

You never do anything wrong. You "make bad choices."

You are never a bad person. You have a medical condition caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain.

You can nver make it on your own. You need help from the "gurment."

Hard work never fixes anything. You need a drug, prescription or otherwise.

Life does not have natural ups and downs. Rather, life is too stressful for you to cope.

"The absence of fathers, not FEMA, explains the images of women and children stranded in the storm. The absence of culture transmitted through stable families, not the absence of government money (gobs of which have been poured into New Orleans for decades to no effect), explains the Lord of the Flies scenario that took shape not after days of desperate privation but immediately once opportunities for looting presented themselves."
Once again I must point back to the foundations of the welfare state and the encouragement it has given thru the years for men to father children that they cannot support with women they have no intention of marrying and the incentive to women as most know was ever growing government subsidies based on the number of curtain climbers they had hanging off of there skirts.

A republican form of government presupposes self-government -- the capacity of citizens to govern themselves according to reason

Here's your test question:

If a republican form of government presupposes self-government according to reason, and the Republican party espouses that principle, then did the people of New Orleans who so roundly demonstrated the total INABILITY to govern themselves according to reason belong to

a) The Republican Party
b) The Democrat Party
c) The Mazola Party
d) The Moon Monkey Party
e) All the above except "a".

No cheating.

The Race Card is what the Race Pimps are playing to refill their coffers with guilt money. More big Government programs to continue the misery with no real solutions. This time we are onto Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. How can you say there is not a cultural issue. Whenever we have riots and looting one race predominates above all others. Guess which one? Time to stop the PC Nonsense once and for all. We have had decades of Affirmative Actions, set asides, Quotas and hiring preferences. Yet still minimal assimilation into the mainstream of American Culture. More than anything the destruction of the Black Family by White Liberals has done more to erase Black Progress than anything else.

It has contributed to the growth of thug culture, drug abuse, criminal behavior, sexual promiscuity, and moral breakdown. And what is the Liberals solution? More of the same. These people are nuts, they have nothing new to offer but the policies that already have failed. More Money from the feds meant money spent on opening New Casinos instead of repair or maintenance on the Levees.

Fellow Freepers:

At the suggestion of writer Michelle Malkin last Friday, I have cobbled together a blogsite called Texas Clearinghouse for Katrina Aid to serve as a clearinghouse for refugee efforts in Texas.

Texas is getting more refugees than any other state -- that's fine, we'll take them all -- but we need help providing them with food, clothing, medicine, and shelter. We need help taking care of their pets, too.

If you are a refugee, you can information that will help you find relief. If you want to donate or volunteer, you can find someone who needs you. Believe me, there are a lot of organizations who need your help.

Right now the site mostly covers Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas but I'm adding more every night. My wife was down at Reunion Arena in Dallas Tuesday handing out care packages and spiritually ministering to the refugees as a representative of her employer. She says that the situation is tragic and that there's a lot of work to be done. There are so many children who don't know where their parents are or even if their parents are still alive.

There are a lot of churches and other organizations in Texas that need help in dealing with the problem and I would appreciate it if you would get the word out.

Many thanks,

Michael McCullough

Stingray blogsite

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