Reflections on Katrina

1: A great opportunity for the Moonbat Left to show their true idiocies. (go here for some samples.)

2: WHY have we continued to grow New Orleans when it is surrounded by water at least ten feet higher than its base (The notoriously fickle Mississippi River to the north and West, and Lake Pontchartrain to the East)? The question at some point is going to have to be asked: Should New Orleans be restored to its pre-Katrina glory? It smacks a bit too much of government subsidy to me; “Don’t worry about building here; the government will bail you out in the event of a disaster.” (Go here for a great essay on the subject).

3: WHY DID PEOPLE STAY??? This is not a cyclone slamming into Bangladesh, a country with no early-warning system. This is a modern AMERICAN city; we knew for days that NO was in peril, yet so many stayed. (Granted, there are the old and infirm; either too fragile to move or wishing to stay where they lived their lives. I get that. But what is up with the able-bodied? Even WALKING could possibly have alleviated some of the misery.)

4: Want to see what happens when a modern American city breaks down? Sociologists will have grist for their degree mills for years to come with the shocking breakdown in civil order in NO. (See Michelle Malkin’s blog for a blow-by-blow account.

This does give one interesting pause: WHY didn’t this same madness break out in San Francisco back in 1989? God knows the conditions were similar; serious natural disaster, loss of communications/power, limited law response (due to overwhelming need), racial tension (see Oakland). Is it simply that we are that much more concerned with grabbing our own while we can?

5: The moral permissibility of looting food. I can quickly feel myself being hauled in two directions at once on this one.

VERSUS

6: The justification of looting valuables because the rich “have it coming to them.” This is bullshit. I MIGHT be able to defend looting food, especially given the impossible living conditions in NO right now. #6 is flatly untenable. It is simply replacing an aristocracy (those who rule through wealth) with a meritocracy (those who rule through perceived moral superiority due to their reduced financial situation). Neither ruling class has any real moral authority; it is not based on justice or social order, it is based upon who has what social standing, a thoroughly arbitrary standard for determining fitness to govern. France in the 18th century already experienced these same convulsions, with the corrupt court of Louis representing the aristocracy, and the Committee for Public Safety becoming the meritocracy (government only because they were NOT aristocrats, and there were then responsible for the Terror). Neither was fit to rule.

And now we have similar events playing themselves out in our only real French colony here in the US (execepting the St. John’s Francophones of northern Maine).

UPDATE Go here for a cogent essay that totally nails the topic discussed in point 4 above.