indeed.
Posted on 11/06/2005 11:11:46 AM PST by DustyMoment
Nagin, Blanco and the Lessons of the Nanny State
In the wake of all of the Hurricane Katrina coverage, a stark reality exists. Somewhere along the line, something failed. The processes that should have been in place to ensure that people were safe above all else didn’t work.
Oh sure, we can point our fingers at the Bush Administration and blame George for not personally going to New Orleans and evacuating people himself. We can blame FEMA, claiming that they failed to act quickly and, when they finally did, it was too little and too late.
But, the blame game doesn’t take us to the heart of the problem. What failed and how did it fail? Many people have pointed to New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana Governor Blanco and said that they were the causes of the failures. And, there is substantial evidence to suggest that, indeed, they are the causes of the failures. So, the question is, if we believe that they were causes of the failures, we must also ask why were they the causes of the failures and how did they fail.
There is no dispute that Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco are devout, dedicated Democrats. And, herein, in my opinion, is where the trail of failure begins. Being Democrats, by itself, does not make them culpable, but let’s examine what the Democrat Party actually represents.
Since the 1960’s, the party of JFK, LBJ, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton has imposed an increasing level of nanny state cradle-to-grave policies on a culpable, willing and gullible US population. For too long, too many of us have looked to the government for the solution to all of our ills. Need housing? The government will provide it. Need food? The government will provide it. Need a job? The government will provide it. Don’t want to work at all? No problem, the government will take care of you.
In the 1990s, the government tried to become the sole provider of our health care but, due to all of its flaws, it failed, miserably, before John Kerry ever got the opportunity to vote for it before he could vote against it. They have declared war on poverty, on individual rights, on states rights – all of the things that eliminate the individual’s obligation to provide for themselves in order to reinforce the government as the nanny state.
Enter into the mix Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco; devout Democrats, eager to toe the party line in hopes of being rewarded with more power and higher positions. As party loyalists, they took their marching orders from the Democratic Leadership Council that told them what to say, when to say it and even coached them on how to say it. As a party totally bereft of ideas or innovation, the DNC taught its members to attack non-Democrats, to question their motives and incentives and to distrust their suggestions. In short, the people at the very top of the Democrat Party taught their minions to rely solely on them as though they were robots or automatons.
On that fateful day when Hurricane Katrina struck, all of these things came together. President Bush called Governor Blanco three days before Katrina struck to suggest that she declare a mandatory evacuation, but the governor need 24 hours to think about it. In other words, she didn’t trust Bush because he was from the other side and the party taught her not to trust “those people”, and she needed to consult with the party High Command to find out what she should do.
Mayor Nagin, another party loyalist, was in the same boat. As long as the city of New Orleans ran relatively smoothly, he could handle it. But when a disaster like Katrina loomed, he, like Governor Blanco, was paralyzed with fear; unsure what to do and which way to turn. Both Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco had been thoroughly indoctrinated in the ways of the nanny state, and both were relying on the nanny state to come to their rescue with directions on what to do, what to say, etc. Only in this case, the nanny state was represented by people from the other side – the hated Bush, Rove, Cheney and others. Paralyzed with fear, lacking instructions from the party and receiving suggestions on action they should take from the Republican president, they sat on their hands.
Governor Blanco feared annoying the party higher-ups by following advice from the hated President Bush. So, she stalled; essentially playing her violin while Rome was about to burn. But Mayor Nagin, more deeply indoctrinated and reliant on the nanny state, was in a worse situation. Not only did he not know what to do, the next higher source of instruction in the nanny state hierarchy, Governor Blanco, was equally frozen in place. Instead of actions being taken to safeguard the lives of the citizens of Louisiana and protect their property to the greatest extent possible, they did nothing because the nanny state, in their minds hadn’t told them what to do. What actions they were able to take amounted to too little, too late.
In the aftermath of Katrina, Governor Blanco continued to play her violin while Mayor Nagin experienced a total meltdown on TV. In the meantime, the Democrat Party leadership showed Governor Blanco how to respond to the disaster by attacking the Bush Administration for not acting quickly enough. Governor Blanco, picking up her cues from the press, joined the fray. With a willing Main Stream Media to push the agenda, we were treated to a non-stop Bush-bash the likes of which we haven’t seen previously. Despite the fact that communities in Mississippi and Alabama were also damaged and, in some cases, far worse than New Orleans, we only heard about New Orleans, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
The primary difference between New Orleans, Mississippi and Alabama is that in Mississippi and Alabama, the people prepared or evacuated, the state and local governments took the actions they could, and the people involved were mostly white. No source of a cause celebre' for the media such as that provided by the good governor of Louisiana and the accommodating mayor of New Orleans.
But the story doesn’t stop there. The irony in all of this is that the nanny state that Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin depended on to tell them what to do and how to do it, tried. Had it not been for the disastrous effects of Katrina and the fury of anti-Bush news articles and television stories, we might never know of the behind-the-scenes efforts made by President Bush to try and improve the situation in Louisiana; both before and after the hurricane struck. But President Bush, the despised representative of the very nanny state upon which Nagin and Blanco relied, was a Republican and, in accordance with the Democrat playbook, they can’t be trusted.
In the media frenzy of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we saw every possible ugly aspect of politics and media agenda possible. The attacks on the Bush Administration became a no-holds-barred excoriation of everything that the Bush Administration (and current administrator of the nanny state) did or attempted to do. Regardless of the effort, it wasn’t enough; it didn’t come quickly enough and, finally, when the race card was played, it was all because President Bush hated blacks and was trying to kill them.
As absurd as that is, a willing and gullible public bought it because the media published it and said it was true. But the underlying cause of all of this wasn’t President Bush, or Karl Rove or Dick Cheney or “Scooter” Libby, or even, to an extent, Governor Blanco or Mayor Nagin. It was the nanny state and the reliance that Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin had built upon it. They had become part of the nanny state when they were elected to their respective positions but, as part of the nanny state, they didn’t know what to do because the representative leader of the nanny state was a Republican, not a Democrat.
And, those are the lessons of the nanny state and the reliance that both Democrats and Republicans are trying to develop on the nanny state. We can see the difference in the response to Hurricane Wilma. In the aftermath of Hurricane Wilma, nanny state wannabees in South Florida, joined the chorus of those complaining about government response. The media tried to run with the story, but the backlash toward those who did nothing to prepare or help themselves in any way or fashion, stunned the Main Stream Media. Licking their chops at additional negative Bush coverage and building on the Katrina story, they ran with every complainer and malcontent they could find. But, the story never took off. Too many Americans, wearied by endless Katrina coverage and Bush-bashing, had had their fill. South Florida is affluent, populated with wealthy, white retirees, and they had been repeatedly warned. As quickly as the stories about the “Bush failures” in the aftermath of Wilma occurred, they disappeared.
What the media didn’t count on was that the public understands the nanny state. And, they knew that the government was not responsible for the whiners and complainers in South Florida not taking steps to save themselves. The nanny state may resonate with some, but not all. Without self-reliance, innovation and the ability to think both independently and “outside the box”, the nanny state may create constituents of big government “cradle-to-grave” policies, but it doesn’t create leaders capable of dealing with abnormal situations. It only creates more people like Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin.
After watching the National Geographic special, Inside Hurricane Katrina, I believe that Governor Blanco must bear most of the blame. Nagin was in over his head and quickly realized it. Blanco made her decisions based on politics during a deadly crisis. That is immoral and cowardly.
Response: Nagin, Blanco, The Nanny State; all symptoms not causes.
There's definite proof of this proposition. Of all the states hit hard by hurricanes this year - Florida, Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana, etc. - only one was wailing about the failures of Fed'l agencies, and only one has a Dem. gov.
(And, yes, I know there were individuals everywhere moaning about things like not getting as much ice as they wanted)
indeed.
How nice you made a great statement I'm sure all the family members of the people who didn't survive or still lost we agree. Only people also died in the evac too. It was better not perfect.
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