H/T to the Chief’s Naval shipmate down around Houston on this one.
It’s always a treat to find some reason in unexpected quarters. David Warren posts from the Great White North, and like Gordon Sinclair in the 70’s, he has a very different perspective from that of the MSM, both theirs and ours.
There’s plenty wrong with America, since you asked. (Everybody’s asking.) I’m tempted to say, the only difference from Canada, is that they have a few things right. That would be unfair, of course — I am often pleased to discover things we still get right.
But one of them would not be disaster preparation. If something happened up here, on the scale of Katrina, we wouldn’t even have the resources to arrive late. We would be waiting for the Americans to come save us, the same way the government in Louisiana just waved and pointed at Washington, D.C. The theory being, that when you’re in real trouble, that’s where the adults live.
He goes on with a very positive account of the actual workings of the relief efforts, compared very favorably to what Canuckia would be able to do in similar circumstances.
It is also noted, as it was in the Chief’s blog here how the enervating effect of generations of welfare dependency renders people virtually unable to conceive of taking some responsibility for their own continued existance in the face of disaster:
From Democrats and the American Left — the U.S. equivalent to the people who run Canada — we are still hearing that the disaster in New Orleans showed a heartless, white Republican America had abandoned its underclass. This is garbage. The great majority of those not evacuated lived in assisted housing, receive food stamps and prescription medicine and government support through many other programmes. Many have, all their lives, expected someone to lift them to safety, sans input from themselves.
Yes, that was insensitive. But it is also the truth; and sooner or later we must acknowledge that welfare dependency creates exactly the sort of haplessness and social degeneration we saw on display, as the floodwaters rose. Many suffered terribly, and many died, and one’s heart goes out. But already the survivors are being put up in new accommodations, and their various entitlements have been directed to new locations.
The Bush-bashing, both down there and up here, has so far lost touch with reality, as to raise questions about the bashers’ state of mind.
There’s more worth noting, and DW concludes with appropriately applying the Kipling poem “If” to Bush. That about ices the cake for the Chief! Anyone who appreciates Kipling in this PC day and age enough to quote him, definitely has his ducks lined up in a row.
Check out the whole post – it’s worth it for sure!