More thoughts on Katrina
As a follow up to everything below, let me just clarify one thing. I'm sure there is blame for the Katrina disaster to be passed out. I just don't think anyone has a good enough handle on everything that actually was done, everything that wasn't done, and everything that could have been done. At least not at this point. And until that whole picture becomes clear, most assignments of blame at this point are just uninformed finger pointing.
There is this mindset today in America that any and all disasters can be avoided, and that's not neccessarily true. Tragedy can happen here. It did in New Orleans and it will somewhere else, at some point in the future. That's life, and sometimes life is tragic. It's silly to think that there's anything we can do to make everyone perfectly safe. Katrina should not be an excuse for a further descent into nanny stateism.
This isn't to politicize the situation. I do beleive the government at all levels is performing its proper rule in conducting these releif efforts. But as far as preventing such disasters from occuring in the first place, the government can only go so far. The private sector bears an equal if not greater share of responsibility for measures to prevent such disasters in the first place. The point is that Katrina should be a wakup call to all of us, to take greater control and greater responsibility of our own lives. And just to be clear, this is not a class thing. Think of the poor that lost everything they had in New Orleans because they didn't get out of the city. And think of the rich who may have physically gotten out, but didn't do more to protect their resources and investments. Before pointing fingers and naming names, maybe we should realize that if there is blame to be assigned, we all share in that blame.
There is this mindset today in America that any and all disasters can be avoided, and that's not neccessarily true. Tragedy can happen here. It did in New Orleans and it will somewhere else, at some point in the future. That's life, and sometimes life is tragic. It's silly to think that there's anything we can do to make everyone perfectly safe. Katrina should not be an excuse for a further descent into nanny stateism.
This isn't to politicize the situation. I do beleive the government at all levels is performing its proper rule in conducting these releif efforts. But as far as preventing such disasters from occuring in the first place, the government can only go so far. The private sector bears an equal if not greater share of responsibility for measures to prevent such disasters in the first place. The point is that Katrina should be a wakup call to all of us, to take greater control and greater responsibility of our own lives. And just to be clear, this is not a class thing. Think of the poor that lost everything they had in New Orleans because they didn't get out of the city. And think of the rich who may have physically gotten out, but didn't do more to protect their resources and investments. Before pointing fingers and naming names, maybe we should realize that if there is blame to be assigned, we all share in that blame.
posted by lonely libertarian at 7:41 AM
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