The Great Society

Interesting look at the aftermath of Katrina at WorldNetDaily:

Failure of an idea
... and a people
In his 1935 State of the Union Address, FDR spoke to a nation mired in the Depression, but still marinated in conservative values:

"Continued dependence" upon welfare, said FDR, "induces a spiritual disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole our relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit."

Behind FDR's statement was the conviction that, while the government must step in in an emergency, in normal times, men provide the food, clothing and shelter for their families.

Fast forward to post-Katrina with a brief pause in the 1960's:

But with the 1964 landslide of LBJ, liberalism triumphed and began its great experiment.

Behind the Great Society was a great idea: to lift America's poor out of poverty, government should now take care of all their basic needs. By giving the poor welfare, subsidized food, public housing and free medical care, government will end poverty in America.

At the Superdome and New Orleans Convention Center, we saw the failure of 40 years of the Great Society. No sooner had Katrina passed by and the 17th Street levee broke than hundreds of young men who should have taken charge in helping the aged, the sick and the women with babies to safety took to the streets to shoot, loot and rape. The New Orleans police, their numbers cut by deserters who left their posts to look after their families, engaged in running gun battles all day long to stay alive and protect people.

Emphasis mine. As I have said before, the four levels of protection are simple: 1st - Personal 2nd - Municipal 3rd - State 4th - Federal If a CAT-5 hurricane is bearing down on you, you grab as much food from your pantry as possible and leave the area several days in advance. If a power line or water main breaks, it is your Municipality's responsibility to make repairs. If there is an earthquake or hurricane, the State should be the first line of aid. The Federal government is invited in by the State (something which Gov. Blanco failed to do for several key days prompting Bush to fly down to persuade her) and their specialty is mop-up and large scale rebuilding. Those people who complain about how slow FEMA was have no clue as to how the various governmental levels work and interact. What were they doing in Civics Class?