Oliver Willis

3 Responses to “Katrina, Two Years Ago”

1. 1 kjhgjkhg
   Aug 30th, 2007 at 12:30 am

   How can we download or save this video?

2. 2 SaveFarris
   Aug 30th, 2007 at 9:09 am

   At the 8:47 mark: “They don’t give us nothin’.”
   8:20: “The State was supposed to take care of us.”
   7:33: “They’re not doing nothin’.”

   This is one of the unintended consequences of the welfare state. People come to rely on the government to take care of their every need instead of being self-reliant. For a generation now, we’ve taught people not to plan for disasters because the government will take care of you. Don’t plan for the future, because the government will take care of you. You don’t even need to worry about the basic necessities of life, because the government will take care of you. And what you end up with is people who, literally, don’t know how to take care of themselves.

   5:15: “We really need to take a look at the Convention Center. It’s getting very crazy in there and very dangerous.”

   This explains why the reporter himself didn’t take his own adivce to help those people. He knew that if he started passing out what little food he had and offered to take a few strandees out, he’d have been mobbed. That’s why the response was “late”: the response workers were follwing the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force. Unless they had supplies for EVERYONE, they weren’t going in. (Well, that and the fact that Blanco barred the Red Cross from intervening. But I’m sure that was Bush’s fault too.)

   1:15: “These are the people who listened to the authorities. They believed in the government and did what they were told to do.”

   No. They didn’t. They were told to evacuate. They didn’t. That famous New Orleans Pride and Stubbornness, normally a good thing, took over. But they didn’t take that opportunity. Because they knew that if things didn’t work out, the government will take care of you.

   Yeah sure. The response will be “Why do you hate the poor so much?”. I don’t. But just as a parent occasionally has to show their child some tough love, so must we as a society start to unlearn that the government is the be-all and end-all and start to re-learn how to be self-reliant. Then maybe, we’ll all be better prepared to handle the next disaster, whatever it may be.

3. 3 Duros62
   Aug 30th, 2007 at 1:45 pm

   It’s not a welfare state. You and I both know that the majority of damage was not caused by the hurricane itself, but in the flood waters after the levees failed (yes, after the storm surge in Lake Ponchaitrain). Since the government was responsible for their construction and upkeep, don’t they bear the responsibility for it’s aftermath?

   I don’t think you hate the poor, Farris, but you certainly have a pretty cavalier attitude about the responsibility of the government to it’s citizens.

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