I'm not much of a Pat Buchanon "fan" since I'm a "moderate Democrat", but every once in awhile he hit's upon something. When I read this article - I thought he hit it right on the button.

Failure of an idea
... and a people

Posted: September 14, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2005 Creators Syndicate Inc.

In his 1935 State of the Union Address, FDR spoke to a nation mired

in the Depression, but still marinated in conservative values:

"[C]ontinued dependence" upon welfare, said FDR, "induces a spiritual

disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To

dole our relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle

destroyer of the human spirit."

Behind FDR's statement was the conviction that, while the government

must step in in an emergency, in normal times, men provide the food,

clothing and shelter for their families.


And we did, until the war pulled us out of the Depression and a

postwar boom made us, in John K. Galbraith's phrase, "The Affluent

Society." By the 1960s, America, the richest country on earth, was

growing ever more prosperous. But with the 1964 landslide of LBJ,

liberalism triumphed and began its great experiment.

Behind the Great Society was a great idea: to lift America's poor out

of poverty, government should now take care of all their basic needs.

By giving the poor welfare, subsidized food, public housing and free

medical care, government will end poverty in America.

At the Superdome and New Orleans Convention Center, we saw the

failure of 40 years of the Great Society. No sooner had Katrina

passed by and the 17th Street levee broke than hundreds of young men

who should have taken charge in helping the aged, the sick and the

women with babies to safety took to the streets to shoot, loot and

rape. The New Orleans police, their numbers cut by deserters who left

their posts to look after their families, engaged in running gun

battles all day long to stay alive and protect people.

It was the character and conduct of its people that makes the New

Orleans disaster unique. After a hurricane, people's needs are

simple: food, water, shelter, medical attention. But they can be hard

to meet. People buried in rubble or hiding in attics of flooded homes

are tough to get to. But, even with the incompetence of the mayor and

governor, and the torpor of federal officials, this was possible.

Coast Guard helicopters were operating Tuesday. There were roads open

into the city for SUVs, buses and trucks. While New Orleans was

flooded, the water was stagnant. People walked through to the

convention center and Superdome. The flimsiest boat could navigate.

Even if government dithered for days – what else is new – this does

not explain the failure of the people themselves.

Between 1865 and 1940, the South – having lost a fourth of its best

and bravest in battle, devastated by war, mired in poverty – was

famous for the hardy self-reliance of her people, black and white.

In 1940, hundreds of British fishermen and yachtsmen sailed back and

forth daily under fire across a turbulent 23-mile Channel to rescue

300,000 soldiers from Dunkirk. How do we explain to the world that a

tenth that number of Americans could not be reached in four days from

across a stagnant pond?

The real disaster of Katrina was that society broke down. An entire

community could not cope. Liberalism, the idea that good intentions

and government programs can build a Great Society, was exposed as

fraud. After trillions of tax dollars for welfare, food stamps,

public housing, job training and education have poured out since

1965, poverty remains pandemic. But today, when the police vanish,

the community disappears and men take to the streets to prey on women

and the weak.

Stranded for days in a pool of fetid water, almost everyone waited

for the government to come save them. They screamed into the cameras

for help, and the reporters screamed into the cameras for help, and

the "civil rights leaders" screamed into the cameras that Bush was

responsible and Bush was a racist.

Americans were once famous for taking the initiative, for having

young leaders rise up to take command in a crisis. See any of that at

the Superdome? Sri Lankans and Indonesians, far poorer than we, did

not behave like this in a tsunami that took 400 times as many lives

as Katrina has thus far.

We are the descendants of men and women who braved the North Atlantic

in wooden boats to build a country in a strange land. Our ancestors

traveled thousands of miles in covered wagons, fighting off Indians

far braver than those cowards preying on New Orleans' poor.


Watching that performance in the Crescent City, it seems clear: We

are not the people our parents were. And what are all our Lords

Temporal now howling for? Though government failed at every level,

they want more government.

FDR was right. A "spiritual disintegration" has overtaken us.

Government-as-first provider, the big idea of the Great Society, has

proven to be "a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit."

----Either we get off this narcotic, or it kills us.