Posted on 09/07/2005 9:41:14 PM PDT by nickcarraway
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.
Just simply brilliant!!!
Same this for a future news cycle. We can replace "New Orleans" with "Los Angeles".
Amen to thatand may Lyndon B Johnson roast his arse on the River Styx..
It was impossible to not notice the overwhelming numbers of women, both young and old, with children and the relative scarcity of men among those left in New Orleans.
Imagine, if you will, the identical crisis occuring in Salt Lake City. How would the citizens there behave? Hmmm?
Some in the public demand a pristine environment and life without risks, but without an clear understanding of the trade-offs.
I agree. I'm a pretty discriminating reader but this is indeed a brilliantly worded analysis of cause and effect. The author is spot on.
PresidentFelon
Aparently "the government" and "they" are some alien race that takes care of us all. "they" coddle us with welfare, "they" run the public transportation system which failed to drive them out of town, "they" didn't come knock on their doors and drag them out physically, "they" didn't write poor people, thugs, pimps, hookers and gang bamgers a check a month prior, and give written notice that a hurricane was comming. "they" should have gone door to door to make sure everyone had a working TV and cable to make sure all the dumb people saw the warnings.
"They", The "Gubbermint" failed.
What's worse, "the President" who is supposed to oversee every municipality, their mayors, concillors, Governors, senators, police departments etc. failed to see they were dropping the ball, and therefore should have put on his cape and red boots and swooped in and saved the world (or in this case a city full of people waiting for "the government" to do everything for them, carry them out of their homes, spoon feed them, wipe their behinds, and provide day care for thier kids.
George Neumayr Ping
"Human fatherhood gives us an anticipation of what He is. But when this fatherhood does not exist, when it is experienced only as a biological phenomenon, without its human and spiritual dimension, all statements about God the Father are empty. The crisis of fatherhood we are living today is an element, perhaps the most important, threatening man in his humanity. The dissolution of fatherhood and motherhood is linked to the dissolution of our being sons and daughters."
Young adolescent boys, with no fathers to guide them, produce children out of wedlock with no responsibilities concerning family, property, or work. Drugs, looting, and violence is seen by them as their right. The first breakdown in the creation of welfare dependant "communities".
If they were capable of self-government, they wouldn't have been poor in the first place.
And the destruction of the traditional family unit is job number one for the Democrats, and their tool is the secular socialist welfare state.
Is Salt Lake City populated by a huge percentage of savage animals like New Orleans (was)?
I'm a singer and I spent two years performing in casinos in that part of the country. It was common for me to hear people say that they have to "win some money to pay the rent, the phone bill, the utilities.....". I would ask these people (blacks) where they worked and they would tell me that they didn't work and were on welfare. I'm black and I am so sick and tired of hearing people avoid the reality that these people are responsible for their own lives. I heard a lot about what they don't have. Let's talk about what they do have- lots of children. These women are on TV saying that they couldn't get themselves to a safe place. If you can't get yourself to a safe place, then why the hell do you have five kids?! How are they going to get their children to a safe place? I'm not on the road anymore and I'm married with one child and trust me, wild horses couldn't have kept me from saving my son's life. That's the job of a parent.
If you fail to educate yourself, prepare yourself for life, then you are doomed to a life that is dependent on others. In an emergency such as this, your life depends on the whim or the ability of an uncaring government.
I have come to believe that LBJ was the biggest racist who ever lived. His creation of a "Great Society" has led to a systematic dismantling of African-American culture. LBJ's system created strong dis-incentives to maintaining the family unit. Boys learn to be men from their fathers. They cannot learn this from their mothers, especially in the situations that have been created in Black America today. Single mothers with several children from several fathers; how can they keep it all straight?
Compare the images of African-Americans from the 60's who were marching in the South with recent images of any recent African American gathering. America became great thru the asimilation of many diverse cultures into a single, unique American culture. The Civil Rights marchers of the past rightfully DEMANDED fair access to this same culture. Somewhere along the line, their descendents began to separate themselves from American culture. This is the collective effect of 40 years of government handouts, begun by LBJ. I think LBJ planned this, and the Democratic Party is knowingly perpetuating this system.
"The Census report shows what that means in vivid detail. In 2000, there were only 25,000 two-parent families in New Orleans with children under 18. By contrast, there were more than 26,000 female householders with children under 18, and no husband present. In other words, slightly more mothers all alone with children than married-couple mothers.
In addition, there were more than 18,000 householders who were more than 65 years old and living alone. Of these, most would normally be female.
If you add together the 26,000 female householders with children under 18, no husband present, and the 18,000 householders more than 65 years old and living alone, that is an estimated 40,000 female-headed households. That explains the pictures we are seeing on television, which are overwhelming female, most often with young children. The chances of persons in this demographic being employed full-time, year round, and with a good income, are not high. The chances of them living in poverty, and without an automobile, are exceedingly high."
http://www.nationalreview.com/novak/novak200509070829.asp
My guess is that people of Salt Lake City would come together and help one another out. When they were rescued, they wouldn't scream at their rescuers, "What took you so long?"
Thanks, great post, honest and refreshing.
Such praises for independent action as this glide over the problem that city life itself relies on interconnection and dependence on others for one's sustenance, transporatation, and whatnot. That's one reason why early American republicanism is full of agrarian rants against large cities.
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