Hang Together...THEN Hang The Thugs...

New York Post Online Edition: postopinion

by John Podhoretz

September 1, 2005 -- "FOR the second time in four years, the United States has been changed utterly by a previously unthinkable event. And just as was the case after 9/11, how this nation responds to the deluge that is sweeping New Orleans away will help define the nature of its character for decades..."

Since this is mostly a feel-good, let's pitch-in, gung ho article, we'll forgive Mr. Podhoretz for equating the intentional, brutal murder of innocent civilians with a hurricane that managed to breach poorly designed flood walls in a town that has reacted to this tragedy by consuming itself with lord of the flies, kill or be killed street thuggery. Louisianna is our embarassing 3rd world state and New Orleans is IT'S embarassing 3rd world city, but it IS ours and needs all the help it can get.

Also, it is far too mainstream media'ish to begin counting the dead long before we've determined how many, and by who's hand...the storm or the beasts from within. This incredibly ugly event is enough story by itself, stands on it's own legs, and doesn't require any this-way-to-see-the-bearded-lady-swallow-the midget. It's entirely my fault for expecting such a conservative bullwark to respond to such horror with the calmness begotten of conservative thinking, and my own over-reaction to hear-me, touch-me, feel me, should not reach their level of knee jerkishness, so I'll cool it while the cooling is good.

Mr. Podhoretz goes on to mention the usual suspects who've come forth to blame humanity in place of the storm, and since we ARE part of nature SOME of the blame MUST rest upon our shoulders. Not as a political football but as a reasonable investigation as to why the people of New Orleans were protected by levees the Romans would have dismissed as being inadequate 2000 years ago. Listening to the Army Corps of Engineers clucking their collective tongues at how sorry these levees were, is on one hand monday morning quarterbacking and on the other hand advice that needs to be heeded. More storms will hit New Orleans, and while it's terribly unfashionable to expect residents of a state to protect their own, let's toss a tourist-tax onto the visiting revellers of the future so that we never again have to watch videos of bandits stealing the night.