One Honest Journalist's perspective on NO

Subject: The Real Problem


Sep 02, 2005

by Robert Tracinski


It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to

deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because it has also

taken me four long days to figure out what is going on there. The reason is that

the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural

disaster.


If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is

obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to

evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the

flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure.


For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of

ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of

doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and

rebuild.


Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to

send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an

enemy insurgency. And journalists--myself included--did not expect that the

story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and

looting.


But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.


The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal

relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is

where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story

wrong.


The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen ove r

the past four days. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina

merely exposed it to public view.


The man-made disaster is the welfare state.


For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be confusing.

People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in an

emergency--indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in other

emergencies. That is what has shocked so many

people: they have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In

fact, it is

not even what we expect from a Third World country.


When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work

together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep

order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an

enterprising people, used to relying on our own

initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I

have seen this a hundred times, in sm all examples (a small town whose main

traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars

and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars

through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of New

Yorkers to

September 11).


So what explains the chaos in New Orleans?


To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description

from a Washington Times story:


"Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and

guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue

helicopters are repeatedly fired on.


"The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to

restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire....


"Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas

National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders.


" '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.' "


The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows

National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on an armored

vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless

people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene

from Sadr City in Baghdad.


What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy

of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very

buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to drive away,

frightened for their lives? What causes

people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome?


Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing furth er

destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them?


My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life

level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox News Channel, she told me

that she was getting a familiar

feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is

located in the

South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the

largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they

were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor.

(They have since, mercifully, been

demolished.)


What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a whiff of the

sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the informational phases

flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels--gave some vital

statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had

already eva cuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained,

a large number were from the city's public housing projects.


Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN

and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners

in the city's jails--so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a

significant overlap between these two

populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the

housing projects,

and vice versa.


There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge

hit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups:

criminals--and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for

their lack of initiative and self-induced

helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on whom the incompetent

administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.


All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the city

government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite

the knowledge that this might be necessary.


But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to

ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political

supporters--not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.


No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are

already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing

to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate

evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe

and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American

"individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused

by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism.


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. They

don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.


But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their

houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry

about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make

a living? They never worried about

those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of

stolen wealth is away of life for them.


The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and

encourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has

swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting.


Source: TIA Daily -- September 2, 200





--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Select a Folder Deleted Items Drafts Sent Items

 

mioque,

I think the "welfare state" is quite another animal in europe. Welfair is only available to a few here. And it is much more than just free medical care. Although I am aware of what you mean, I have never seen any simularities. But you are right their is more to it. Also, overall, judging eropeans on their current state of Christianity and Values, I would have to say that your type of welfare has not been good for you at all, in fact I would say Europe is an unmitigated "values" disaster area. I don't think I would trade with you. And besides, I don't think Europe has seen flooding on this scale. THis was a whole major US city underwater.

 

Monique,

I think you missed my point. The welfare you are describing is not "welfare" it is socialism. That is quite a different thing. Here we have welfare that is only available to a few. Think about it!

Did you know that the old NO did not get flooded or very damaged. The problems is the growth of the city sprawled into the flood zone over the years. That would not be the FED Gov's fault, that would be the City Govs Fault. If they wanted to spread out like that they should have planned for the consequences like you say. The crazy thing is, we got plenty of land here. It is not a necessity like it is in Holland. And bulding cities below sea level is unique to NO and not common like it is in Holland. So Lets put the blame on the city of NO where it should be.

You are pointing out that the Tsunami victims acted differently. Could it be the welfare makes the difference? Remember, our welfare is nothing like your socialism. And remember, you Europeans are the folks who will bring us the Antichrist. I think your socialism and lack of self suffiency is the spring board that will bring him here. Not to mention the countries of Europe each have less than 20 percent Church attendance. If that is the result of your "welfare" you can keep it. One day you Europeans will just want someone to take care of you, and you wont have enough self suffiency to care if it is the Antichrist.

And remember, We are the ones who got your European butts out of the sling twice.

[ September 09, 2005, 10:03 PM: Message edited by: Bunyon ]

 

You missed my point again. Old NO was built on the high ground. It has been there for 200 years, and it did not flood or sustain much damage. One bar, Pat O'Briens, did not even close. The areas that were flooded are modern developments. So the verious modern city govs are responsible for that. The state and fed gov have no say in how a city spreds itself out.

I think American Chritianity has just as much of a God's will attitude. Those folks were not that poor, perhaps by a western world standard, but not by a worldwide standard. Even on welfare, they are rich compared to most in the world. There can be no excuse for the rampant raping, murdering, and looting. But that is my point. Welfare, breeds such behavior. These were welfare people. Most Americans are not. Wellfare, not socialism.

Monique- "but they don't get enraged at the universe to the point that they go around raping and pillaging."

You should go live on the West Bank or Gaza Strip for a while, or visit the site of the World Trade Center.

 

Many evangelical scholar's believe that Daniels prophecy predicts a revival of the Holy Roman Empire and the Antichrist will come out of it. But anyway, I was just getting you back for the Ignorant American comment

Only A relatively few Americans are on welfare, and for a limited amount of time. Europeans are socilistic. We view welfare as a limited help for the poor, Europeans see it as a way of life. Europeans are wards of the state always and forever. That is the difference. It seems like the perfect scenerio for the rise of the antichrist. But that is debateable.

I think the welfare state did cause the disaster after the disaster. If you ever visit an American housing project (that is gov paid for housing) you would understand. Most are havens for drug dealers. You would not ever want to go in there alone. Not if you want to live, that is! Most of the stranded people were out the Projects. This is what the author means when he says there is overlap between the projects and the prison.

[ September 10, 2005, 02:31 AM: Message edited by: Bunyon ]

 

You said that the Islamic folks act differently because of a God's will attitude. So I pointed out the west bank. But I did not see where you switched to speaking about non-islamic people.

Others were blaming the feds, and it just bled into this conversation. I don't follow your writing style very well. I'll read slower.