IPFS Vin Suprynowicz

The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

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WHAT CAN 70 YEARS OF WELFARE PRODUCE?

Juicier details will doubtless emerge -- I’m betting we’ll see faked-up emergency response plans; levee repair money diverted to build fancy marinas, riverboats, and casinos; the “best and the bravest” abandoning their posts and the buses that could have carried many to safety.

But it would be hard to do a better basic expose on how disastrous it proved for the residents of New Orleans to place all their faith in “government” than has already been accomplished by our friend Lew Rockwell at www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/flood.html.

“Gulf Coast residents know precisely what it means to be trapped -- ostensibly by a flood but actually by statist policies and ideological commitments that put the government in charge of crisis management and public infrastructure,” Lew wrote, back on Sept. 2.

“The levees that failed and caused New Orleans to be flooded, bringing a humanitarian crisis not seen in our country in modern times, were owned and maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers. ... who knew that a direct hit by a hurricane would cause them to break? Many people, it turns out. Ivor van Heerden of Louisiana State University, reports Newsday, ‘has developed flooding models for New Orleans, was among those issuing dire predictions as Katrina approached, warnings that turned out to be grimly accurate. ...’ ”

And let’s not even talk about the way “Homeland Security” moved in to take charge. (Though I’ll bet rescue workers trying to fly to New Orleans today are still being religiously stripped of their toenail scissors and cigarette lighters, darn it.)

“Only the public sector can preside over a situation this precarious and display utter and complete inertia,” Mr. Rockwell continued. “What do these people have to lose? They are not real owners. There are no profits or losses at stake. They do not have to answer to risk-obsessed insurance companies who insist on premiums matching even the most remote contingencies. So long as it seems to work, they are glad to go about their business in the soporific style famous to all public sectors everywhere. ...

“Moreover, every American ought to be alarmed at the quickness of officials to declare martial law, invade people’s rights, deny people the freedom of movement, and otherwise trample on all values that this country is supposed to hold dear,” Mr. Rockwell concludes.

Indeed, mothers with crying babies were kept out in the wind and rain even as the storm hit. Why? Because everyone had to be “searched’ before being permitted into the Superdome. And again this week, as National Guard veterans of the Iraq War arrived to restore order, they put to good use the lessons they have learned abroad, promptly “searching” anyone with whom they came into contact.

Treating them as suspected insurgents. Right here in America.

Which brings me to the most disturbing thing I saw on television during the non-stop coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.

For the most part, it appeared middle-class and working-class citizens of New Orleans -- the kind of people who have jobs and possess private automobiles -- had mostly left by the time the storm hit in all its fury. What cameramen found at and near the Superdome the next day, as the flood water rose, were members of a mostly black underclass with no resources of their own, a people who over a period of generations have come to expect someone else -- through the cash redistribution agency known as “government” -- to provide them with or heavily subsidize their housing, their transportation, their health care, even their children’s schooling.

(How’d that “public transportation system” work, guys?)

According to The New York Times, about a third of the New Orleans police force simply walked off the job. Videos show uniformed officers joining in the systematic looting, which was so shameless that looters on occasion waited calmly in line with their shopping carts to take their turn. Do we need to ask what 70 years of the welfare state have taught these folks to believe about “property rights”?

And those who were not busy looting were not merely pleading for help. They were angry.

They were shouting into the cameras, addressing someone out there -- the government? Us? -- who they believed owed them an obligation to “get on down here” and bring them some stuff. Food, water, whatever they needed. Stuff. Bring it to us -- the message seemed clear -- or we’re just going to take it.

This was not a proud moment to be an American, irrespective of whether the corrupt political class of Louisiana can figure out how to build and maintain strong levees.

Americans were once a people proud of their relative self-sufficiency. Yes, we lend our neighbors a helping hand. But my family and the families of most Americans were essentially penniless, 70 years ago. Since the Great Depression, we have worked and saved until we have some assets. We set aside for the future.

OK, our “security” can turn out to be partly illusory, in the face of nature’s power -- the trust and support of our neighbors and families may be worth more than we realize.

But the value of planning and setting aside is not entirely an illusion. We have cars and bank accounts, accessible even if we’re forced to leave home. We have set aside emergency food and water and flashlights and batteries and firearms to defend ourselves and our property. If I lived in a city built below sea level, what would it cost me to buy and store a rubber raft or a beat-up old canoe -- perhaps on the roof?

Hurricanes are not unforeseen disasters. They come every year.

The deaths are terrible, but look at WHO is dying. Self-sufficiency has survival value. Applied over a period of generations, the welfare state can breed self-sufficiency out of a people. (In fact, welfare recipients found setting aside any portion of their “earnings” can be accused of hoarding, and punished for this offense.)

Look at the fate of the mendicant classes in New Orleans -- the ones who trusted government to “provide.” Look at what happened to the property of the merchants who trusted their taxes were buying them “police protection.” And beware.


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