Via Ninme, QoL, who by the by has some interesting stuff up on Katrina today and yesterday. But this Mark Steyn column pretty much speaks for me on the subject. I think it's insensitive to look at helpless and panicked people and blame them for their plight. But I would certainly hope that the Katrina disaster would cause us all to take a long hard look at the question of how the welfare state ennervates people and renders them helpless and whether it's compassionate to promise government help (at whatever level) for everything. In other words, there has been a government failure, and it goes way beyond the failure of the evacuation plan. As a whole our response to poverty and a growing underclass is to throw money at the problems to keep them out of sight --but this past week ought to teach us that an underclass is everyone's problem: it's a true threat to public order, and thus a threat to all of us. Lifeguards are taught that a drowning man will often panic and cling so tightly he can drown the man trying to save him. . . .which is why we need life-preservers, but why it's better to teach people to swim.
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