New Orleans is an UnNatural Disaster

[Slim]

This is in my opinion a brilliant, though "Un-PC", analysis of what happened.


An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State

An Objectivist Review

by Robert Tracinski | The Intellectual Activist

September 2, 2005



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 over 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 small 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 further 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 phrases 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 evacuated 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 a way 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.

[esskreemr]

I read this piece last week. I'm not going to deny that a chronic dependancy on welfare is a bad thing. History, however, refuses to support the ridiculous and extremely dubious main premise of this article.

Panicked at the prospect of looters, the acting commander of the Presidio put the city under martial law. The mayor ordered the troops to "not take any prisoners. ... Shoot anyone caught looting,"

New Orleans 2005? Nope. San Francisco 1906.

How about the V-E Day Riots (Canada)?

As the war drew to a close in May 1945, there were over 24,000 military personnel in the city. What became known as the V-E Day Riots, involving sailors, soldiers and civilians, began on 7 May, the day Germany formally surrendered. Rioting and looting continued into the next day. By the time order was restored, downtown Halifax was a shambles. If that was not enough, on 18 July an ammunition barge blew up in Bedford Basin, shattering windows in the surrounding communities and sending forth a mushroom cloud. The explosion set fire to nearby exposed ammunition dumps at the Bedford Magazine and only valiant efforts succeeded in containing the fires – though for a time many feared a second Halifax Explosion.

Hmmmm... didn't see many welfare candidates mentioned in that one... I'll reread it to make sure.

How about this one:

The rioting not only left one young man dead, but another in a coma and dozens more injured, destroyed cars, and damaged property. It embarrassed the police department and the city at a moment that should have been among its proudest, permanently scarred a university that had finally begun to turn around its hardscrabble reputation, and may well have cost a career cop the top job on the force.

That was over a SuperBowl victory. Mostly college students.

It's ridiculous to equate a breakdown in authority with a "Welfare Nation". There were tourists from Scotland looting. There were police officers looting.

Eventually we'll start hearing about the 'heart-warming' stories that didn't make it through the rehashed din of everybody screaming 'Oh my God! They just looted diapersfrom WalMart! Was that a package of clean underwear that they just stole? Those animals!!!', the stories of "people rescuing people from flooded houses, people helping move sick people to dry ground, people sharing food and materials with each other, and much more" will surface.

Will the conservative synchophants then blame the kindness and humanity on the 'Welfare State?' Doubtful.

When poor people profit from a disaster everybody calls it looting, when rich people profit from a disaster they call it contracts to Haliburton.

[mrbiggs]

I don't buy it. Here's why.



Crime follows public housing, no one can deny that. Why is it that public housing makes crime more common? Well, very simply, not having money or food makes theft and other similar unlawful practices for money more common. These lead to more serious crimes--a shoplifter is shot by a storeowner, for example. (Or vice versa.)



Sure, many of the remaining New Orleans residents were welfare recipients. But the looting was not necessarily a result of their lack of morals. What do welfare recipients and the hurricane victims have in common? They have no money, and little food. In the abandoned New Orleans, stealing stuff is as easy as walking into an empty store. Poor people are more likely steal things, it's as simple as that.

As for the fires and shooting, it only takes 1 or 2 lunatics to do these things. And they may not necessarily be welfare recipients.


Well, that's my opinion, at least...

[ThatReallyHurt]

There are good people and there are wieners in every single facet of society, regardless of wealth, religion, location, colour of skin, education, language spoken, occupation... it's a fact of life.

A disaster or other highly stressful situation can bring out the best in the good people, and the worst in the wieners.

Remember, happy good things don't boost ratings - ergo, we rarely hear about them.

[Slim]

You're giving examples of lawlessness and looting and trying to find welfare as the cause? That was never the argument. It was that a welfare culture can lead to lack of respect for authority and out of control behavior.

Its absurd to think welfare is the only reason that this can happen. Which is what you attempted to prove with your examples.

Why didnt this happpen in other other areas of the coast hit with the hurricane? You know if it had the media would have been all over it. Why was it concentrated in the area that had the most amount of people on the dole?

Trying to equate stealing TVs with Haliburton? Give me a break. There is no kindness or humanity in a welfare state. Its a broken system that keeps people in chains by rewarding the "gimme" mentality.

I dont think diapers or food come in boxes marked "Panasonic".

[Slim]

Originally Posted by mrbiggs

I don't buy it. Here's why.



Crime follows public housing, no one can deny that. Why is it that public housing makes crime more common? Well, very simply, not having money or food makes theft and other similar unlawful practices for money more common. These lead to more serious crimes--a shoplifter is shot by a storeowner, for example. (Or vice versa.)



Sure, many of the remaining New Orleans residents were welfare recipients. But the looting was not necessarily a result of their lack of morals. What do welfare recipients and the hurricane victims have in common? They have no money, and little food. In the abandoned New Orleans, stealing stuff is as easy as walking into an empty store. Poor people are more likely steal things, it's as simple as that.

As for the fires and shooting, it only takes 1 or 2 lunatics to do these things. And they may not necessarily be welfare recipients.


Well, that's my opinion, at least...

Right, justify crime and stealing because someone is poor. Good one. There are laws regarding this, and they are not written to be based on your level of wealth. You are justifying lawlessness. Let people get away with it and it becomes a learned behavior. It's this attitude that is the problem. Looting the electronic departments and shooting at rescue works are indeed signs of a morality problem.

[foildad]

Originally Posted by Slim

Why didnt this happpen in other other areas of the coast hit with the hurricane?

Because those areas were hit hard and fast, the damage was done, and then help could come. Not so in New Orleans.

[Moses]

Originally Posted by foildad

Because those areas were hit hard and fast, the damage was done, and then help could come. Not so in New Orleans.

A very important point.

How much do you know about the geography of the Gulf Coast, Slim? Mississippi, the second hardest hit state has no natural point in its terrestrial area that is below sea level. New Orleans lies on the alluvial deposits of the Mississippi River and most of the city is below sea level. When the levees broke water settled into the deepest parts of the city and was blocked from re-entering the ocean by the un-broken lengths of the sea wall. Engineers have been predicting it for years but the city and state failed to make emergency plans. That's why New Orleans had it so rough: unfavorable geography and poor planning.

And, dear Slim, what exactly is your opinion? It's easy to post an article then say nothing about it. You can deride the rest of us for not perceiving your little epiphany, but it doesn't much lead to anything when most of what we have are someone else's words.

Originally Posted by Slim

Why didnt this happpen in other other areas of the coast hit with the hurricane? You know if it had the media would have been all over it. Why was it concentrated in the area that had the most amount of people on the dole?

Paradoxically those places in the world that offer the greatest opportunity for prosperity attract the greatest number of poor. Why? Poor people seek economic opportunity and New Orleans, with its high amount of tourism, has a large number of opportunities in the South's fastest-growing economic sector: service. That attracts a lot of people who want to work (or convinces people who were born there to stay). However, not all of them can make their fortunes and thus become dependent on the civil institutions available to them.

Take that last fact, introduce the hurricane disaster, mix in some political self-righteousness, and we have that "brilliant" article written by Mr. Tracinski.

-Da Mose

[mrbiggs]

Originally Posted by Slim

Right, justify crime and stealing because someone is poor. Good one. There are laws regarding this, and they are not written to be based on your level of wealth. You are justifying lawlessness. Let people get away with it and it becomes a learned behavior. It's this attitude that is the problem. Looting the electronic departments and shooting at rescue works are indeed signs of a morality problem.

Eugh.

No, I'm not justifying it. It is a fact of life that people are more often to steal things when they need them. I will probably never rob someone for money at gunpoint. This is because I already have a reasonable amount of money. I think that's reasonably simple.

The fact that it's a morality problem is my point. Morals are not necessarily connected with welfare and the like. I know people who are reasonably well off who don't feel bad at all about stealing things. These people are not as common in richer societies, because there isn't much to steal if all your necessities are covered. But they still exist.

I'm guessing that the looting thing is somewhat overplayed by the media. Which is more interesting to viewers, another family taking food out of a grocery store, or some jerk walking off with 4 TVs? People take advantage of the situation, but that is true of people always. It has nothing to do with welfare.

The original article said, in different words, that being on welfare leads to a complete lack of morals. I think that this is simply wrong.


Saying that welfare causes a lack of morals is like saying that being black causes people to be on welfare. Or that being on welfare causes people to be black. Just because two groups have large numbers of people in common does not mean that one causes the other.

[ReverseLunge]

Lets be honest here. The only people who stayed in New Orleans are blacks and lowest white trash. Don't get politically correct just get honest. We all know what these are worth.

[PeterGustafsson]

Hi!

Originally Posted by Slim

There is no kindness or humanity in a welfare state. Its a broken system that keeps people in chains by rewarding the "gimme" mentality.

Wow. I wonder why I have not noticed that life in all of the welfare states over here in Europe are nasty, brutish, and short.

Sarcasm aside:
1. I think that the media seeks out special things to report on, so that what is reported is not a statistically valid sample of what is going on in NO.
2. Those who did evacuate on their own are a group where no criminal record, access to a car, access to various resources are overrepresented compared to the general population. Once many of those are removed by ecavuation, those left behind form a more problem-prone subpopulation.
3. The sheer enormity of the situation probably caused a significant proportion of those left behind to snap, and behave totally illogical.
4. Catastrophic situations are often followed by lootings, so I do not believe that this is so strange - it is only a special in magnitude.
5. There are so many unknowns out there, so a definitive analysis now is bound to be wrong in many ways, IMO.


Best of luck to all involved.

Peter Gustafsson

[Slim]

My opinion of the article is that it was brilliant and spot-on. That's what I prefaced the post with. And I agree completely with the author's analysis.

I understand the need at certain times that there is no choice but to "take" what is needed in the areas of basic necessity. The looting of gun shops and electronics stores is not where I would go to find items to keep me and my family alive until things start to recover.

It's not just New Orleans or this particular situation. Please explain the riots after the OJ verdict.

Why are most housing projects and subsidisied housing devlopments a complete mess and virtual war zones? People who dont have ownership and some stake in their surroundings are angry and just dont care if they trash the place since it's been handed to them and someone else will come and fix it.

If you read the article without the liberal, bleeding heart emotional fog that clouds rational thinking, the author's key point is that the welfare mentality breeds a culture that doesnt care about anything but what they can milk out of it.

Points to clarify since the fog has clearly rolled in here:

1. There are people collecting welfare who are welfare parasites, but not all people who collect welfare are welfare parasites.
2. Welfare mentality can lead to an increase in lawless and anti-social behavior, but not all lawless and anti-social behavior is a result of the welfare mentality.

And insane programs like giving out $2000 cash to ANYONE ("my ID got washed away!), is an example of how throwing money at the problem is viewed as a solution. Luckily someone had some synapses fire and put an end to that plan.

[Slim]

Originally Posted by Moses

That attracts a lot of people who want to work (or convinces people who were born there to stay). However, not all of them can make their fortunes and thus become dependent on the civil institutions available to them.

Take that last fact, introduce the hurricane disaster, mix in some political self-righteousness, and we have that "brilliant" article written by Mr. Tracinski.

-Da Mose

Thanks for the geography refresher, but the type of disaster is actually irrelavent to what the article is talking about. Its about a cultural response to a situation, and what may have contributed to it.

I would not consider the inability to make one's fortune as a valid excuse to go on the dole. But that's just me and my self-righteousness.

[Mr Epee]

Originally Posted by Slim

My opinion of the article is that it was brilliant and spot-on. That's what I prefaced the post with. And I agree completely with the author's analysis. .

Are you sure this is your opinion, or did Rush tell you that this is your opinion?

[L.O.A.S.]

Slim, you might appreciate reading this guys thoughts. Its a little long (10 pages printed out), but refreshing. Some highlights below.

http://www.ejectejecteject.com/

Only a few minutes ago, I had the delightful opportunity to read the comment of a fellow who said he wished that white, middle-class, racist, conservative ****suckers like myself could have been herded into the Superdome Concentration Camp to see how much we like it. Absent, of course, was the fundamental truth of what he plainly does not have the eyes or the imagination to see, namely, that if the Superdome had been filled with white, middle-class, racist, conservative ****suckers like myself, it would not have been a refinery of horror, but rather a citadel of hope and order and restraint and compassion.
That has nothing to do with me being white. If the blacks and Hispanics and Jews and gays that I work with and associate with were there with me, it would have been that much better. That’s because the people I associate with – my Tribe – consists not of blacks and whites and gays and Hispanics and Asians, but of individuals who do not rape, murder, or steal. My Tribe consists of people who know that sometimes bad things happen, and that these are an opportunity to show ourselves what we are made of. My people go into burning buildings. My Tribe consists of organizers and self-starters, proud and self-reliant people who do not need to be told what to do in a crisis. My Tribe is not fearless; they are something better. They are courageous. My Tribe is honorable, and decent, and kind, and inventive. My Tribe knows how to give orders, and how to follow them. My Tribe knows enough about how the world works to figure out ways to boil water, ration food, repair structures, build and maintain makeshift latrines, and care for the wounded and the dead with respect and compassion.
There are some things my Tribe is not good at at all. My Tribe doesn’t make excuses. My Tribe will analyze failure and assign blame, but that is to make sure that we do better next time, and we never, ever waste valuable energy and time doing so while people are still in danger. My Tribe says, and in their heart completely believes that it’s the other guy that’s the hero. My Tribe does not believe that a single Man can cause, prevent or steer Hurricanes, and my Tribe does not and has never made someone else responsible for their own safety, and that of their loved ones.
My Tribe doesn’t fire on people risking their lives, coming to help us. My Tribe doesn’t curse such people because they arrived on Day Four, when we felt they should have been here before breakfast on Day One. We are grateful, not to say indebted, that they have come at all. My Tribe can’t eat Nike’s and we don’t know how to feed seven by boiling a wide-screen TV. My Tribe doesn’t give a sweet God Damn about what color the looters are, or what color the rescuers are, because we can plainly see before our very eyes that both those Tribes have colors enough to cover everyone in glory or in shame. My Tribe doesn’t see black and white skins. My Tribe only sees black and white hats, and the hat we choose to wear is the most personal decision we can make.
That’s the other thing, too – the most important thing. My Tribe thinks that while you are born into a Tribe, you do not have to stay there. Good people can join bad Tribes, and bad people can choose good ones. My Tribe thinks you choose your Tribe. That, more than anything, is what makes my Tribe unique.

[Slim]

Originally Posted by Mr Epee

Are you sure this is your opinion, or did Rush tell you that this is your opinion?

Rush. Good one. Didnt see that coming.

Please explain to me why when someone voices an opinion that is counter to their liberal, oh sorry, "progressive" ideology, we are dismissed as being a deciple of Rush Limbaugh and unable to think for ourselves, rather than logically and rationally discussing the points?

It's an intellectually weak tactic.

[Philistine]

I thought this article from the New Republic did a pretty good job going over much the same ground--with a bit less of the finger-pointing:

Poverty Line
by Noam Scheiber
Post date: 09.09.05
Issue date: 09.19.05
It took a few days after New Orleans flooded for the press to breach the mental levee blocking comments on the victims' race and class. But, once that levee finally broke, it washed away pretty quickly. In a furious rant on Thursday, CNN's Jack Cafferty lashed out at journalists' unwillingness to take on the "elephant in the room" and complained that "almost every person we've seen, from the families stranded on their rooftops ... to the people holed up in the Superdome, are black and poor." Thereafter, the major networks got in on the action, and, by Sunday, a Fox roundtable was debating Condoleezza Rice's concession that "we do, I think, at some point, need to see that people couldn't evacuate who were poor ... [and] understand better how to make sure that that doesn't happen again."

The good news is that we're about to have a long overdue debate about poverty in this country. The bad news is that most of the commentary so far has focused only on poverty as an economic condition. Cafferty observed that "many of [Hurricane Katrina