North Star Writers Group

Two years after New Orleans and the Gulf Coast were devastated by Hurricane Katrina, large portions of the city remain in ruins, untouched since then. And the big lie keeps getting repeated that President Bush and FEMA were late and/or minimal in their reactions. The truth of the matter is that the federal government has shoveled some $127 billion into the region – not that anyone there acknowledges it, much less shows any gratitude. And what good has it done? Heck, I defy anybody to even figure out where most of it went, disappearing into the chronically corrupt labyrinth of Louisiana bureaucracy as it has.

And it was local Democratic officials who were AWOL when needed most – from Mayor Ray Nagin, who didn't use dozens of school buses available to him to evacuate while it was still possible, to Governor Kathleen Blanco, whose only reactions were to cry, pray for Katrina to turn and play partisan politics with people's lives by delaying her request for federal assistance because she and her party didn't want President Bush getting any credit for anything positive that may have come from it.

But more than all this, Katrina should have taught us all an even bigger lesson – that of the abject failure of liberalism and the dire consequences of utter dependency on government. The hurricane peeled back the cover and showed us just what happens when left-wing ideas are allowed to go unchecked for decades – people are reduced to a combination of crying infant and drug addict, unwilling and in many cases literally unable to even think much less do anything for themselves. And not even a Category Five hurricane is enough to shake the mentality.

This sounds harsh, but when even the imminent threat of death is not enough to spark a little initiative within oneself, what else can you say? Or when you have some people (though certainly not all, I don't wish to stereotype all New Orleanians) that are still sitting around, expecting President Bush to plop a new pre-fabricated house down for them like Dorothy landing on the Wicked Witch of the East in the Wizard of Oz? At some point, you have to realize that you'd better do for yourself if you're going to survive, but that reality is apparently never going to sink in for some.

And it's not like Katrina was a bolt out of the blue. New Orleans sits below sea level, in a bowl, on a sinking marsh, right smack in a hurricane zone. This was only a matter of time, and thus something for which preparation should always have been local and state government's number one priority. But it never was, and what few dollars were appropriated for unsexy things like levee construction and maintenance were siphoned off – if not outright embezzled – for political patronage. And even after the fact, Mayor Nagin – whose re-election speaks volumes about the inability of many to think independently – is encouraging reconstruction in the same places! If repeating behavior while expecting different results is an accurate definition of insanity, then Nagin has truly gone mad.

New Orleans has now sunk further into mayhem, as many of the solid citizens left due to Katrina, never to return. That primarily leaves the criminals and the dependent to determine what kind of city it will be. Its murder rate is up there with Baghdad's. And yet, anyone who suggests that there is anything wrong with this, or that the policy proscription should be anything but lots more of the same, or that since the next Katrina is just as inevitable as the first one was perhaps we'd be better off retaining the port but otherwise not trying to put things back how they once were, is pilloried and slandered as a mean, uncompassionate and, more often than not, racist.

What's mean and uncompassionate is allowing people to live this way, simply because their mindless dependence gives you power and re-election in perpetuity. And this goes beyond just one city impacted by a storm. Places like Detroit and Philadelphia are not all that much better.

How much longer do we have to observe the awful results of liberalism before we put a stop to it? Or even hold liberals accountable instead of applauding their "good intentions" that really aren't that good when you get down to it?

If we can't find it in ourselves to change how we deal with places like New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina, then I'm not sure we're capable of independent thought either. Where is our initiative?

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