We've been fighting these liberals for a long time now, and this disaster was for sure an uncovering of the failures of the welfare state.
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 ...
I like Ben Stein's quote "...imagine if the local authorities were in charge of your healthcare"
Good article. Says it all.
a dead-on article. thanks for posting it
The crime shall be IF we allow our pandering politicians to redevelop the swamp. No amount of money can protect the fools who may repopulate that folly.
The article certainly identifies well the cultural dogma many who were there in N.O. learned from their peers and elders. It's not so much "a welfare state" as it is a cultural indoctrination that appears devoid of other influences.
The truly needy -- elderly without resources, disabled, children without families/parents -- are left to suffer the consequences and further social disinfranchisement brought about by criminal character.
But how it is that so many of those on public assistance were congregated in New Orleans...well, I just don't know how that occured.
Los Angeles, Miami, other cities, take note.
AMEN!
BIG PING
We've been fighting these liberals for a long time now, and this disaster was for sure an uncovering of the failures of the welfare state.
" '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.' "
This is something she should have said before the storm hit.
BUMP
This event has made it painfully obvious that in a disaster situation, the people raised on welfare socialism will just sit helplessly on a bridge for days demanding that people raised on working class ideals come and save them. My question to the welfare socialists is: what kind of morbid perversity drives a person to place welfare housing in a known hurricane target in the first place?
As a graduate of Tulane who spent nearly 3 years in NOLA, the scenes if chaos this week didn't surprise me all that much. When you arrive for orientation as a new student, they give you a packet telling you that you're pretty much risking your LIFE if you drive into a project. A Tulane student is murdered just about every year, or at least that was the case in the 90's. Don't leave so much as a dollar BILL showing in your car, or it will be broken into. The crime, not to mention the squalor, of the projects - is mind boggling for students from suburbian America.
The poorest residents of NOLA basically just brought that level of chaos to the Superdome, as well as the city at large, after the flood. That certainly doesn't mean there weren't some heros in the bunch - people of character, like Jabbar Gibson, the young guy who stole the school bus and took a boatload of people to Houston. I met many wonderful black people in New Orleans, many of whom might have lived in those poor areas - but the sad fact is, the culture itself of the lower classes in that city is very scary, and the projects are absolutely frightening dens of drugs and murder (the city erected a huge billboard by 1 that said "though shalt not kill" - I guess to help remind them!)
Tucker Carlson is one of the only guys I've heard actually call it like it is when talking to Al Sharpton, arguing against the whole race card thing - saying something about how it's so obvious a fact that the poor don't have life as easy as the rich, that you don't even need to STATE it - "that's why nobody wants to BE poor!" - but as this article pinpoints, it's beyond just the culture of poverty we're seeing this week - it's a culture of EXPECTATION. Yeah I'm poor, my survival skills are minimal, and the government damn well better SAVE me, NOW.
I felt awful for the people of New Orleans as I watched this disaster - which was beyond just forseeable - the damn scenario was nearly charted to a tee by researchers and published in the Times Pic several years ago - but I wasn't all that empathetic to the people screeching at the top of their lungs that the government should have been delivering water, diapers, and food - to each and every citizen - a couple of days after the tragedy struck. I live in Anchorage - and if we get a 9.0 earthquake tomorrow - I'm not going to just wander downtown and scream "where's my WATER!!" and wait for the Feds to drop it in to me.
Something is scarily wrong when that big a group of people thinks that after a natural disaster, food and water should be at their feet within 24 hours. Open a history book, for &*#@*(% sake.
The media is ignoring everything from the incredible obesity problem, to the other problems these projects already HAD - in favor of trashing Bush, FEMA, and other officials (who I'm not saying did everything right - not by any means). We need to take a hard look at poverty in this country - and the culture that goes along with it. Does anybody ever remember seeing groups of 250 lb Indonesians angrily screaming "we need HELP!" after the tsunami?
These traits didn't seem to exist in most of those we saw on television.
The article does a good job of covering the key points. The poor are often not accustomed to being challenged to meet their own needs or that of their families, and they don't seem to have the necessary skills to do it.
As God is my witness, I would not have sat stranded on a concrete island for five days hopelessly waiting to die without doing anything to help myself. I really don't get how people could not care enough to want to survive.
Your post is right on and well said. Thank you. I almost wanted to scream at some woman that Fox interviewed who was spitting out a MRE and saying that she wouldn't eat anything like that after she supposedly had gone three days without food. If MREs are good enough for our brave soldiers then it's good enough for a welfare recipient.
What did astonish me was the outright anger about not being given more, not being evacuated faster, etc - with the "thank yous" seeming to be far and few between. And I mostly watched Fox... you do wonder how quickly the Astrodome will become a cesspool, and how quickly crime will rise in Houston. I'm hoping it doesn't, of course! But if it doesn't, that will be more due to the power of those Texans to keep things in line, the whole "don't mess with Texas" thing and all :)
Although I suppose thank yous and good behavior aren't all that sensational, so I do wonder if the networks didn't seek out those elements a bit, so we got the impression that's nearly ALL that was happening. I noticed they finally pulled poor Shep after he went ballistic a night or 2 ago - that guy was just driven to the edge.
Yeah, I completely agree. I like MREs, having bought a bunch while I was in college a while ago, and they tied me over many a time -- at one a day, even.
I felt repulsion when I saw a middle aged woman just after being rescued from the Superdome, angrily bashing/blaming "Bush" then removing her dark glasses (she HAD dark glasses -- just saying, it could've been worse) and staring into the camera, saying more "to Bush," raising her voice even more..
It was repulsive.
I wonder if but what out of the ninety who screamed, "thank you" the news covered the two who were blaming "Bush" and all...
I'd at least like to think so. I do know that what we've seen from New Orleans is a society of people who do not seem to possess the awareness that their survival is up to them. There are few (on FR, anyway) who would even assume that someone was going to come along and solve their problems for them, but what we've seen by many there in N.O. is people who try for the use of threat and intimidation (the guy saying, "there's not gonna be no riot er anything, at least, I don't THINK so...") to try to survive, and don't seem to consider that it's their responsibility to survive. Or, not. None of us would turn our back on someone who was hungry and in need at an emergency (just look at what's taking place now, as to all the helps and good works resulting), but, this emergency has pointed out to others that poverty is not an issue of money so much as it is a condition of mentality and spirit.
I say, save and rescue, help and provide but unless there's some responsibility required along the way, the problems plaguing so many rescued isn't going to change.
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