Criticizing Nagin and Blanco for their failure to recognize the uniqueness of the threat could be seen as hindsight, what came next is unforgivable – dismissing the lawlessness sweeping the city as secondary. As we have since discovered – in a near-perfect validation the "broken windows" theory – first you had the "victimless" looting of plasma TVs and jewelry. And next you have rape and murder and snipers picking off evacuees. And the best the Governor can do is pout.
Had New Orleans been placed under Louisiana National Guard control on Saturday and Sunday, when the city was dry, thousands would not have died.
Had a leader with half the stones of Rudy Giuliani been there instead of this dim pair of Chamberlains, hundreds, maybe thousands would not have died.
Had the Mayor listened to bloggers and evacuated – yes, bloggers! – hundreds, maybe thousands would not have died.
Had a "shoot to kill" order for looting been announced prominently early on – and a couple of egregious violators been made an example of – it would have gone a long way toward eradicating this anarchy.
Lynch a couple of black people, and it keeps the rest of them is the working theory at RedState.org.
If you think you can stomach the rest, here is the link.
Who would Jesus shoot to make his example?
By the way, in case it wasn't clear, I am against extrajudicial executions. I guess I'm just quirky that way.
-The Oklahoma Hippy
This guy is a nut job but he has a bit of a point. People should not shoot at rescue helicopters, rape 8 year old girls, or open fire at hospital workers. At this point, Martial Law may not be a bad idea.
ReplyDeleteHaving enough troops in a place to control the situation is an excellent idea. When there isn’t a breakdown in social order, then things like this don’t happen. Just like in Iraq, there was no plan to maintain the peace. This guy has no point at all. He’s a racist hate-filled bastard. When are people going to understand that everything that has happened is a failing of our institutions of government and not the people abandoned in New Orleans?
ReplyDeleteRape an 8 year old girl and breaking her neck in the process is NEVER acceptable behavior. People still have the person responsibility of acting like they live in a civilized country. Should the preparations have been better? Sure but hindsight is 20/20. Is this guy a flaming racist? I’m sure he is, but that does not take away from the fact that there are people in New Orleans behaving like animals. Yes their situation is dire but that does not give you the right to be less human because of it.
ReplyDeleteOf course rape isn’t. But it happens everywhere all the time and we don’t talk about shooting to kill in other places. If this has happened in Palm Beach FL, there wouldn’t be any talk of shooting to kill, even if he had reports of a rape and a shooting. The idea wouldn’t even cross our minds. The difference is these people are black and poor. We have to face how this country treats its poor, and answer the question of why African Americans are so disproportionately impoverished in this country.
ReplyDeleteRapists are rapists and it has nothing to do with the hurricane. And people always behave like animals when their social order is removed. It's what the book “The Lord of the Flies” is about. It’s a psychological response that happens in every culture, at every moment in history, and at every place in the world is the social order is disrupted.
Had we had people there to maintain order, then these people wouldn’t have had as bad of a reaction as they did. The main ingredient was a lack of any type of authority for nearly a week.
While your argument is good and I agree that things should have been handled differently but that does not take away from an individual's personal responsibility.
ReplyDeleteYes we need to figure out when the African-American has a larger proportion of poor than whites and yes we need to change the way this country views poverty but at the end of the day the only person responsible for his/her behavior and decisions is him/herself.
Yeah, but what your talking about is the psychological reaction to having their world destroyed and having no social structure.
ReplyDeletePeople have predictable psychological reactions in situations like this.
Yes, people are responsible for themselves.
That being said, there's is almost a type of insanity defense to the violence and aggressive behavior.
It doesn't excuse it, but it explains it.
Take any animal, put them in a small space with a lot of other animals of their same species and then limit their food and water.
What you would see is an exponential rise in aggression.
And what's interesting about that is that it doesn't matter what animal you're are talking about. It's universal.
That's what is going on.
But 250,000 people were killed in the Asian tsunami in societies a hundred times poorer than region of the US and no state aid reached them for weeks. No-one was murdered or raped.
ReplyDelete