There are immediate needs in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and the first priority is meeting those, but after that, we need to think about the American community, about the one America we think we are, the one we talk about. We need people to feel more than sympathy with the victims, we need them to feel empathy with our national community that includes the poor. We have missed opportunities to make certain that all Americans would be more than huddled masses. We have been too slow to act in the face in the misery of our brothers and sisters. This is an ugly and horrifying wake-up call to America.
As others have pointed out, the chaos and anarchy of Katrina, the lack of a central government that provides for its citizens… is right-wing utopia. That is not the America our predecessors fought for, or the America our citizens and soldiers work for every day of their lives.
This is not the America any of us signed up for, and massive changes need to be made.
Actually a system of governement in which the power of the governement is delegated primarily to the states rather than a central government is called Federalism, and it is exactly what our predecessors fought and died for because that is what the founding fathers wrote into the constitution.