Rebuilding the Man

Say a hurricane is about to destroy the city you live in. Two questions:

What would you do?

What would you do if you were black?

Sadly, the two questions don't have the same answer.

To the first: Most of us would take our families out of that city quickly to protect them from danger. Then, able-bodied men would return to help others in need, as wives and others cared for children, elderly, infirm and the like.

For better or worse, Hurricane Katrina has told us the answer to the second question. If you're black and a hurricane is about to destroy your city, then you'll probably wait for the government to save you.

This was not always the case. Prior to 40 years ago, such a pathetic performance by the black community in a time of crisis would have been inconceivable. The first response would have come from black men. They would take care of their families, bring them to safety, and then help the rest of the community. Then local government would come in.

No longer. When 75 percent of New Orleans residents had left the city, it was primarily immoral, welfare-pampered blacks that stayed behind and waited for the government to bail them out. This, as we know, did not turn out good results.

President Bush is not to blame for the rampant immorality of blacks. Had New Orleans' black community taken action, most would have been out of harm's way. But most were too lazy, immoral and trifling to do anything productive for themselves.

All Americans must tell blacks this truth. It was blacks' moral poverty - not their material poverty - that cost them dearly in New Orleans.

Farrakhan, Jackson, and other race hustlers are to be repudiated - they will only perpetuate this problem by stirring up hatred and applauding moral corruption. New Orleans, to the extent it is to be rebuilt, should be remade into a dependency-free, morally strong city where corruption is opposed and success is applauded. Blacks are obligated to help themselves and not depend on the government to care for them. We are all obligated to tell them so.

(c) 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

The Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson is founder and president of BOND, the Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny, and author of "Scam: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America." (only $10.19 on Amazon.com)

Check out the BOND web site.

The organization's mission is Rebuilding the Family by Rebuilding the Man.

Make a contribution.

Lessons from the Welfare State

" Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." –
George Santayana

In “Lessons of Katrina” I wrote about Alexis DeTocqueville’s “Memoirs on Pauperism” (1835) recounting his observation that the large pauper class in Britain was a result of the right to public assistance dating to Elizabethan times.

Although Tocqueville’s Democracy in America says nothing about American pauperism, he warns that the temptation to rely on government entitlements would inevitably erode personal independence. The flooding due to Hurricane Katrina exposed a pauper class in New Orleans.

A Brit friend doubted my account of Tocqueville and the British welfare system. I was reminded of Santayana’s warning above.

Tocqueville was introduced to the evils of pauperism by the J.B. Say (1828) book about the French social system. Say restates the Malthusian theory that population always tends to exceed the means of existence and does so even more when a policy of relief encourages the very poor to have large families supported not by their labor but by the government.

The British Poor Laws were introduced by Elizabeth I in the 16th century following the disolution of monasteries. England was then the richest nation in the world but also had the highest rate of pauperism among developed nations.

Much later, due to the hardships of the Napoleonic wars, British justices established the Speenhamland system in 1795. These new Poor Laws created a social safety net whereby those whose earnings fell below a given standard would receive a subsidy to maintain a subsistence level.

The result was an increasing birthrate among the poor, a dramatic increase in the poor population (reaching 20%), coupled with a decrease in wages and productivity and a rise in food prices and unemployment among the general population. Quite a success it was!

By the 1830’s when Tocquville visited England, the publics were demanding reform of the welfare system. Those reforms concentrated public benefits on the aged and sick, while able bodied men and women were “encouraged” to find work.

Tocqueville went even further than the British reforms by challenging the very principle of public relief. He noted that the progress of civilization transforms more and more wants of people into perceived needs thereby creating a pauper class that may be as well off as many in the midle classes of less developed countries.

Though based on noble intentions, public charity is fatally flawed because it denies the basic fact of human nature, that men will work only to survive or improve their condition. Public charity as a “right” degrades men by enabling them to live a life of dependency and idleness.

Meanwhile Tocqueville conceded the necessity of charity for “inevitable evils such as the helplessness of infancy, the decrepitude of old age, sickness, insanity and calamities.” He much preferred private charity, using the public dole only as a last resort.

In a recently discovered second manuscript called the “Second Work on Pauperism” (1837) Tocqueville noted the supreme importance of personal property ownership that “instills the moral and social virtues that prevents pauperism.” Sounds a lot like George Bush’s Ownership Society.

It is truly unfortunate that the New Deal policies enacted during the Great Depression have become embedded in the social fabric of some of the poor, aided and abetted by the professional victicrats. Welfare reform enacted by the Republican Congress during Clinton’s first term raised millions out of the dependency class.

Now, however, the Jesse Jackson victicrats are using the hard times caused by Katrina and Rita to demand more welfare, when what the poor need most of all are values and fathers at home.

It appears that we must continually re-learn the lessons of the past.

Stuck-on-stupid

Cindy Sheehan verily stuck on Stupid

Jesse: Bring…the…troops…home…now!

General Honore to the reporters in New Orleans: Don't get stuck on stupid!

Too bad that Cindy Sheehan did not hear him. She said to the reporters: "I am watching CNN and it is 100 percent Rita...even though it is a little wind and a little rain...it is bad, but there are other things going on in this country today...and in the world!!!!"

Or is it Dumb and Dumberer?

"I would like to say to Cindy Sheehan and her supporters don't be a group of unthinking lemmings. It's not pretty," said Mitzy Kenny of Ridgeley, W.Va., whose husband died in Iraq last year. The anti-war demonstrations "can affect the war in a really negative way. It gives the enemy hope."

Then there is the inimatable Babs.

This summer's back to back superstorms are proof positive we have entered a new period of "global warming emergency,"

artist/citizen Barbra Streisand told ABC's Diane Sawyer.

"We are in a global warming emergency state, and these storms are going to become more frequent, more intense," Streisand urgently declares. But Sawyer did not remind Streisand that a Category 5 hurricane struck the Bahamas with 160 mph winds -- when the singer was five years old, in 1947! And when Streisand was 8 years old, a Cat 5 hurricane -- named "Dog" -- packing 185 mph churned-away in the Atlantic. When she was 9,..... Up next on the weather warning watch, Streisand says to ABC: "There could be more droughts, dust bowls. You know, it's amazing to hear these facts." (DRUDGE)

She has to be the Dumbest!

Gathering of Heroes

Hugh Hewitt broadcast today from the annual "Medal of Honor Convention," which hosts the living recipients of the nation's highest honor. It was truly remarkable and inspiring radio. Hugh interviewed several American heroes. I was impressed with every story but for lack of space will report on only one.

The latest recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor is Mr. Tibor (Ted) Rubin who received the Medal of Honor during a White House ceremony on September 23, 2005. Mr. Rubin, born in Hungary in 1929, is a survivor of 14 months in the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. Liberated by the U.S. Army, he credits Army medics for saving the lives of survivors.

The personal character of Corporal Rubin and his “call to duty” are exemplified in this very recent quote--

“I always wanted to become a citizen of the United States and when I became a citizen it was one of the happiest days in my life. I think about the United States and I am a lucky person to live here. When I came to America, it was the first time I was free. It was one of the reasons I joined the U.S. Army because I wanted to show my appreciation.”

Ted Rubin's Medal of Honor Citation

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty:

Corporal Tibor Rubin distinguished himself by extraordinary heroism during the period from July 23, 1950, to April 20, 1953, while serving as a rifleman with the 1st Cavalry Division in the Republic of Korea. While his unit was retreating to the Pusan Perimeter, Corporal Rubin was assigned to stay behind to keep open the vital Taegu-Pusan Road link used by his withdrawing unit. During the ensuing battle, overwhelming numbers of North Korean troops assaulted a hill defended solely by Corporal Rubin. He inflicted a staggering number of casualties on the attacking force during his personal 24-hour battle, single-handedly slowing the enemy advance and allowing the 8th Cavalry Regiment to complete its withdrawal successfully.

On October 30, 1950, Chinese forces attacked his unit at Unsan, North Korea, during a massive nighttime assault. That night and throughout the next day, he manned a .30 caliber machine gun at the south end of the unit's line after three previous gunners became casualties. Rubin continued to man his machine gun until the ammunition was exhausted. His determined stand slowed the pace of the enemy advance in his sector, permitting the remnants of his unit to retreat southward. As the battle raged, Corporal Rubin was severely wounded and captured by the Chinese.

Choosing to remain in the prison camp despite offers from the Chinese to return him to his native Hungary, Corporal Rubin disregarded his own personal safety and immediately began sneaking out of the camp at night in search of food for his comrades. Breaking into enemy food storehouses and gardens, he risked certain torture or death if caught. Corporal Rubin provided not only food to the starving Soldiers, but also desperately needed medical care and moral support for the sick and wounded of the POW camp. His brave, selfless efforts were directly attributed to saving the lives of as many as forty of his fellow prisoners.

Corporal Rubin's gallant actions in close contact with the enemy and unyielding courage and bravery while a prisoner of war are in the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit upon himself and the United States Army.

How fortunate we are to live in America where people from all over the world come for a better life and many volunteer to fight for our freedoms. Every American child should know about these heroes and their sacrifices.

We should all buy the book Medal of Honor: Portrait of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty which contains a biography of 117 recipients of the Medal of Honor, including one woman, Captain Mary Walker, a Civil War surgeon. The book is published by the Medal of Honor Foundation. Buy a 2nd book for your child's school.

Educating Rori

Do you remember the charming movie Educating Rita (Michael Caine and Julie Walters) about a young married female hairdresser who signs up for a course at the Open University because she is eager to learn. Her husband urges her to have a baby and strongly opposes her decision to persue an education. Rita meets her tutor, a mildly successful middle-aged academic with a drinking problem who tutors because he needs the money. As time goes by, he overcomes his initial repulsion and when he sees how quickly Rita learns, he falls in love with his own creation.



This post is dedicated to the task of “Educating Rori” who expressed dismay at recognizing the names of only three intellectuals out of the list of 100 in the Prospect and Public Policy magazine’s survey. I’ll play the mildly successful professor and begin with my own selections. Not being myself an intellectual, I’ll rely on Wikipedia and Google for the following excerpts.

Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Alois Ratzinger) is one of the most influential academic theologians of the 20th century and author of many books including In the Beginning… A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall (1995), Introduction to Christianity (1968, new edition 2000) and Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions (2004). Ratzinger held the position of Professor at the Universities of Bonn, Munster, Tubingen, and Regensburg. In 1972, he founded the theological journal Communio now published in seventeen languages and one of the most important journals of Catholic thought. In response to an increasing de-christianisation in Europe, where secular humanism is influential, Pope Benedict particularly emphasizes what he sees as the need for Europe to turn back to its fundamental values.

Freeman John Dyson is an English-born American physicist and mathematician, famous for his work in quantum mechanics, nuclear weapons design and policy, and for his futurism viewpoints. Dyson worked for the British Bomber Command during World War II; after the war, he moved to Princeton and became a naturalized citizen of the United States. At Princeton Dyson demonstrated the equivalence of the two formulations of quantum electrodynamics which existed at the time - Richard Feynman's and Julian Schwinger’s. He is famous for the Dyson operator. Dyson worked on the Orion Project, which proposed the possibility of space-flight using nuclear propulsion and he is currently the president of the Space Studies Institute. Dyson was awarded the Max Planck medal in 1969.

Francis Fukuyama is an influential American political economist and author and Professor of International Political Economy and Director of the International Development Program at Johns Hopkins University. Fukuyama is best known as the author of the controversial book The End of History and the Last Man, in which he argues that the progression of human history as a struggle between ideologies is largely at an end, with the world settling on liberal democracy after the end of the Cold War. But he has also argued that since biotechnology increasingly allows humans to control their own evolution, it may allow humans to become fundamentally unequal, and thus spell the end of liberal democracy as a workable system. Politically, Fukuyama has been considered a neoconservative. He was active in the Project for the New American Century think-tank starting in 1997 and, as of 2004, he serves in the Bush administration as a member of the President's Council on Bioethics.

Christopher Hitchens is a British journalist, author, and literary critic now living in the US. He has been a columnist at Vanity Fair, The Nation, Slate, and a contributor to many other publications. Hitchens is known for his iconoclasm, anti-clericalism, and anti-fascism, as well as for his lacerating wit and his dramatic departure from the Anglo-American political left. He was long regarded as a socialist but a series of disagreements beginning in the early 1990s led to his resignation from The Nation shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Hitchens was deeply shocked by the fatwa issued against his longtime friend Salman Rushdie. This marked the beginning of a new period in his career, one in which he has been a vociferous critic of what he describes as "fascism with an Islamic face". Following the 9/11 attacks, Hitchens and the Socialist professor Noam Chomsky debated the nature of the threat of radical Islam and of the proper response to it.

Bjorn Lomborg is a Danish political scientist and former director of the Institute for Environmental Assessment in Copenhagen. In 2001 he was selected "Global Leader for Tomorrow" by the World Economic Forum. Lomborg attained significant attention by penning The Skeptical Environmentalist, a controversial book whose main thesis is that many of the claims and dire predictions of environmentalists are exaggerated. Lomborg later founded and acted as director of the Copenhagen Consensus project, and served as editor of the resulting book, Global Crises, Global Solutions (2004). Lomborg was selected as one of TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people of 2004.

And my write-in candidate was the translator of Machialelli’s The Prince.

Harvey Mansfield is Professor of Government studies and teaches political philosophy at Harvard. He has written on Edmund Burke and the nature of political parties, on Machiavelli and the invention of indirect government, in defense of a defensible liberalism and in favor of a Constitutional American political science. He has also written on the discovery and development of the theory of executive power, is a well known translator of Machiavelli and is author of the best translation of Tocqueville's Democracy in America. His current research is a book on manliness. Mansfield has held Guggenheim and NEH Fellowships, and has been a Fellow at the National Humanities Center. Educating the Prince is a book of essays honoring Mansfield written by his former PhD students including Bill Krystol, editor of The Weekly Standard.

Intelligence and Wealth of Nations

The last post (Men are Smarter) caused a spirited interchange at Starbucks this morning and a few terse blog comments (You’re stupid!!!) all thoroughly appreciated. The conversation raised several interesting questions about IQ.

From Wikipedia, an intelligence quotient or IQ is a score derived from a set of standardized tests that measure a person's cognitive abilities, ie intelligence. IQ scores are correlated with measures of brain structure and function as well as size. IQ tests measure actual performance, not innate potential. Among the developed countries, IQ is highly heritable, and by adulthood the influence of environment on IQ is undetectable.

For a given group, IQ scores are generally normalized such that the average is 100 and the standard deviation is 15. The distribution is Gaussian (bell shaped) and 68% of the scores fall within +/- 1 standard deviation, i.e. between 85 and 115. IQ is strongly correlated with academic success, and well correlated with job performance and advancement, health, longevity, and literacy. IQ and happiness are not correlated.

When comparing different groups, say men and women, one must not normalize the distributions, since it’s the average score for each group that is most interesting. Thus the Irwing/Lynn study showed that the mean IQ of the men is 5 points higher than the mean IQ of the women in their sample of 100,000 people.

Prof. Richard Lynn showed in a separate study that national per capita incomes and rates of economic growth are positively correlated with national IQ. He found that national IQ explains 57 percent of the variance of real GDP per capita.

Lynn studied 60 of the largest nations having national mean IQs ranging from 62 (Ghana) to 110 (Japan) and with 1998 GDP/person ranging from $458 (Sierra Leone) to $29,605 (United States). Some of the mean IQs include Canada-97, China-98, France-97, Germany-103, India-82, Israel-90, Italy-103, Mexico-88, Russia-96, the UK-100 and the USA-98.

Taking the countries in three groups of 20, the data look like this:

Group ------- IQ Range --- GDP/person

Top 1/3 ------ (97-110) --- $20K
Middle 1/3 --- (85-96) ---- $9K
Lowest 1/3 --- (62-84) ---- $3K

The correlation of wealth with IQ is obvious. There are other secondary factors including whether countries operate free market or socialist economies and unique circumstances such as the possession of valuable natural resources like oil in the case of Qatar (IQ-78, GDP/P-$21K) and trade sanctions imposed on Iraq (IQ-87, GDP/P-$4K).

However, if we look at Western Europe compared to the USA we find a large discrepancy in GDP/person that cannot be explained by IQs, markets or resources. For comparable IQs in the range 97–103, the USA GDP/person is 50% higher than the European’s. To my mind that huge difference is explained by the lower tax rates and governmental regulations and the higher work ethic and level of entrepreneurship “in this, the greatest country on God’s green earth.”

Men are Smarter

Prospect and Foreign Policy magazines have published this list of the world's top 100 living intellectuals. On the Prospect web site you can vote for your top five. Click here to vote. My selections were:

Benedict XVI …… pope
Freeman Dyson …… physicist
Francis Fukuyama ….. political scientist
Christopher Hitchens …… essayist
Bjorn Lonborg ….. environmental scientist (sceptic)

You could also nominate a bonus intellectual and I chose Harvard historian Harvey Mansfield, the expert on Machiavelli. I gave serious consideration to Fr. Richard J. Neuhaus, Michael Novak and Michael Crichton.

The list is dominated by the west (three fourths) and America (one third). Half the intellectuals live in the US. But women are under-represented at only 10%.

If one includes all the dead white men the gender difference is even more pronounced. In Human Accomplishment, Charles Murray presents an inventory of 4002 significant figures in the sciences, philosophy, literature, art and music. Only 88 are women (2%).

Of course the dearth of ancient women was primarily due to the exclusion of women from intellectual fields. But when one looks at the 20th century the numbers are not significantly changed. Thus women were awarded only 3.5% of the Nobel Prizes in the sciences and literature in the last century.

The question is how much of a role does intelligence play in these results? It has long been believed that the median IQs of men and women are equal. But in a paper to appear in the British Journal of Psychology in November, Paul Irwing and Richard Lynn said men's IQs are on average five points higher than those of women.

The study was based on IQ tests of over 100,000 people. The researchers discovered that there was no difference in boys’ and girls’ intelligence until the age of 14. But after that point a difference of almost exactly five IQ points emerges which seems to remain constant throughout adulthood. “The small male advantage in IQ is therefore likely to be of most significance for tasks of high complexity, such as complex problem solving in mathematics, engineering and physics, and in other areas of high spatial ability," Irwing said.

Furthermore the bell curve of the males has a broader standard deviation than the female bell curve. That means that there are more males than females in the tails of the distribution at very low IQ and at very high IQ.

The study showed that men outnumbered women in increasing numbers as intelligence levels rose. There were twice as many men with IQ scores of 125, typical for people with first-class degrees in Britain. When scores rose to 155, associated with genius, there were 5.5 men for every woman.

The two professors argue this is why men — who also have larger brains — are more likely to win Nobel prizes and other major academic distinctions.

Thus it has now been statistically demonstrated that men are smarter! But common sense is something else. At a recent press briefing in NOLA, reporters continued asking General Russell Honore the same question about the last storm, expecting a different answer (the definition of insanity). The General warned the mostly male reporters: “Don’t get stuck on stupid!”

When the next male reporter asked the very same question, Honore fired back: “You’re stuck on stupid,” said the General. Maybe it’s just reporters.

What say you, blogettes?

Democratisaurus

According to Howard Fineman (NewsWeek) a nasty civil war is brewing within the Democratic Party, a fight between the ‘governing class’ within the Washington Beltway and ‘activists’ elsewhere.

The modern party has been molded by the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) founded in 1985 to combat the Reagan Revolution. The DLC philosophy propounded cultural traditionalism, pro-market economics and hawkish foreign policy. It’s not clear that they really meant it, but Bill Clinton became DLC leader in 1990 and used the platform to defeat George Bush I in 1992, even running to the right of Bush by advocating welfare reform.

Then came 2000 and the Party loyalists were shocked and dismayed by the George Bush II victory. Since then, with growing ferocity, Democratic activists outside the mainstream have adopted the hysterical Deaniac brand of extremism motivated by hatred for Bush and fondness for leftist ideals. The activists (George Soros, Moveon.org, the victimhood alliance, Hollywood,..) accuse the Democratic Party of yielding to George Bush on the Iraq War, tax policy, judicial nominees and more.

Since the last electoral cycle the lefty fringe has become ever more vitriolic and it appears that they are winning the ideological battle. From Michael Moore’s movie; Dan Rather and the CBS memo scandal; the Joe Wilson - Valerie Plame fiasco; 70+ front page NY Times stories about Abu Graib and Gitmo; defending the UN despite oil-for-food; slandering John Bolton and John Roberts; glorification of Cindy Sheehan; to the recent finger pointing in New Orleans, it’s clear that the inmates are now in charge of the asylum.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, mainstream national Democrats have adopted the disgusting race hustling ways of the Jackson-Sharpton-NAACP alliance.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill) lamented about the president's inadequate "empathy" and criticized the government's "historic indifference" and its "passive indifference" that "is as bad as active malice." Since Obama is only 44, he probably does not know about the $6.6 trillion of anti-poverty spending by the indifferent government since President Johnson’s "war on poverty" began in 1964.

Behind the Great Society was a socialist principle: By giving the poor welfare, subsidized food, public housing and free medical care, government would end poverty in America. There is only one problem: it doesn’t work!

In 1935 FDR spoke to a nation mired in the Depression about the danger of welfare dependency: "Continued dependence 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."

The American spirit held that government must help in an emergency, but in normal times men provide the food, clothing and shelter for their families.

FDR was right. A ‘spiritual disintegration’ has overtaken some of us. Government-as-first provider, the socialist idea of the Great Society, has proven to be ‘a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.’

Mark Steyn noted in the Daily Telegraph that “charges of Republican ‘racism’ rang particularly hollow in the context of New Orleans, where sodden blacks might be better advised to ponder what they have to show for being a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party for four decades.”

Democrat strategist Donna Brazile summed up the Party deficiencies saying, "Democrats are in the Stone Age when it comes to African-American outreach."

So what are the Dem’s to do? The Party base includes teachers unions who put their welfare first and deny vouchers to poor families; public employee unions who enjoy healthcare and retirement benefits far better than the middle class average; personal injury lawyers who drive up the cost of medical care for all of us; Hollywood and university elites who are sadly out of step with middle America; atheists and the ACLU who strive to drive any mention of God from the public square; poor blacks who have relied on the Democratic Party for decades with meager progress.

The American people are fully fed up with the antics of the unions, lawyers, elites and the ACLU. Blacks are waking up to their dependency. After close to $7 trillion has been spent on liberal solutions to eradicating poverty it is clear to all with a brain that the Democratic Party is “bookless” and is going the way of the dinosaur.

Intellect v Emotion

The Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the nomination of Judge John Roberts for chief justice of the Supreme Court are over. After all the senatorial bloviating there was bipartisan agreement on Judge Roberts' soaring intellect, integrity and judicial ability. Each day Roberts confirmed the opinion of the American Bar Association that he is eminently qualified to serve on the highest court. And as a near clone of his mentor Justice Rehnquist, Roberts seems the natural choice to succeed him as Chief. The only question remaining is how many Democrats will do the right thing in the confirmation vote next week.

Still the hearings were not uninteresting, as the days of testimony provided a look inside the psyches of the two political parties. The Democrats showed themselves to be the party of emotion. Consider this sampling of Democratic sentiment:

BIDEN: I believe that the federal government must act as a shield to protect the powerless against the economic interests of this country.

DURBIN: The basic question is this: Will you restrict the personal freedoms we enjoy as Americans or will you expand them?

FEINSTEIN: And it seems to me that the living Constitution is that each person in this great country, man or woman, rich or poor, white or black, whatever it might be, can really reach their full potential.

KENNEDY: Even in this new century, some Americans are still denied a voice at the ballot box because of their color.

LEAHY: If anyone needed a reminder of the growing poverty and despair among too many Americans, we now have it.

SCHUMER: Many of us consider racism the nation's poison. Do you regret some of the inartful phrases you used in those memos, a reference to illegal amigos in one memo?

DURBIN: When you are defending gays and lesbians who are being restricted in their rights by the Colorado amendment, you are trying, from my point of view, to expand freedom in America. But then when you say, "If the state would have walked in the door first to restrict freedoms, I would have taken them as a client too," I wonder, where are you?

FEINSTEIN: For me one of the most important issues that need to be addressed by you is the constitutional right to privacy. Do you then believe that this implied right of privacy applies to the beginning of life and the end of life?

KENNEDY: The stark and tragic images of human suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina have reminded us yet again that civil rights and equal rights are still the great unfinished business of America.

DURBIN: Is there any room in constitutional interpretation for the judge's own values or beliefs? And your response: No, I don't think there is. But beyond loyalty to the process of law how do you view the law when it comes to expanding our personal freedom?

FEINSTEIN: Let me move to the case of the hapless toad, known more commonly as Rancho Viejo v. Norton. Do you believe there's a basis for sustaining the Endangered Species Act other than the commerce clause?

SCHUMER: Just assure me that modesty isn't a concept that you use when you want to slow things down because the courts are moving too fast.

DURBIN: You've lived a comfortable life. Court cases often involve people who have not. Many times contests between the powerful and the powerless just with the rule of law and the Constitution on their side, praying for relief, for their day in court.

FEINSTEIN: I want to go back to hapless toad. It still bothers me.

Enough said. Now contrast the responses of a Republican judge.

ROBERTS:

Judges and justices are servants of the law, not the other way around. Judges are like umpires. Umpires don't make the rules; they apply them. But it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ball game to see the umpire.

Judges have to have the humility to recognize that they operate within a system of precedent, shaped by other judges equally striving to live up to the judicial oath. And judges have to have the modesty to be open in the decisional process to the considered views of their colleagues on the bench.

If I am confirmed, I will confront every case with an open mind. I will fully and fairly analyze the legal arguments that are presented. And I will decide every case based on the record, according to the rule of law, without fear or favor, to the best of my ability.

If I am confirmed, I will be vigilant to protect the independence and integrity of the Supreme Court, and I will work to ensure that it upholds the rule of law and safeguards those liberties that make this land one of endless possibilities for all Americans.

Senator, I don't think you want judges who will decide cases before them under the law on what they think is good -- simply good policy for America.

I had someone ask me in this process, "Are you going to be on the side of the little guy?" And you obviously want to give an immediate answer, but, as you reflect on it, if the Constitution says that the little guy should win, the little guy's going to win in court before me. But if the Constitution says that the big guy should win, well, then the big guy's going to win, because my obligation is to the Constitution. That's the oath.

In my view intellect (with integrity) trumps emotion.

As Americans we believe in the Constitution, and our liberty is best preserved by those who, sitting on the bench, remain faithful to its timeless principles. Judges like John Roberts and his mentor William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas; conservative Republican justices all.

California Flooding

Long Beach, California





Quick, name an American city of 450,000 where the majority of the population is non-white, where a quarter of the population lives in poverty, and where some of the city streets are, even on a dry day, below sea level.

New Orleans, of course.

But also, Long Beach, California.

So wrote Melana Vickers in Tech Central Station.

In New Orleans it has now been sadly realized that government inaction can lead to a horrific tragedy. But here I’m not talking about the inadequate response of FEMA, the Louisiana National Guard or the New Orleans mayor.

Back in 1965 following the extensive flooding caused by Hurricane Betsy (nicknamed Billion-Dollar Betsy) the Orleans Levee Board raised existing levees to a height of 12 feet and the US Congress funded the Lake Pontchartrain Hurricane Protection Project that would have included flood gates and other protections.

Before long a lawsuit was filed by the environmental group Save Our Wetlands, Inc. that led finally in 1977 to a trial over the Environmental Impact Statement. The court ruled that the EIS was “legally inadequate” and that there were “serious questions as to the adequacy of cost-benefit analysis of the plan.” The project was killed.

Then Hurricane Katrina breached the levees, flooded New Orleans, the death toll already exceeds 425 and the estimated cost exceeds $100B. How’s that for cost-benefit?

Meanwhile back in Long Beach (and to Melana Vickers) the only barriers protecting its poor Blacks, Hispanics, Cambodians and others from drowning are berms and sea walls constructed by the government. Yet in California, politicians (including Sens. Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein) and environmentalists battle against such walls. They argue that "beaches, surfing and the coastal lifestyle are things that people really care strongly about," and that the solution is government eviction from the coast, known as "managed retreat." Sea walls are ugly and an absolute no-no.

But people live there. In fact, 80 per cent of California's residents live within 30 miles of the systematically eroding coast. "Managed retreat" in favor of nature and beaches would represent the biggest government expulsion of humanity of all time, and it would represent government intervention just as surely as sea walls do.

Roberts Hits a Grand Slam

At the start of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings yesterday on the nomination of Judge John Roberts for chief justice of the Supreme Court, Roberts introduced his wife, Jane, and their two children — Josie, 5, and “Dancing” Jack, 4. Senators smiled at them like proud grandparents. (LA Times)

For several hours Senators preened and blathered while Roberts smiled, taking nary a note and looking, well, judicial. Finally the next Chief had his chance to speak. He looked directly at the committee and spoke eloquently for several minutes. The highlight for me:

Judges are like umpires. Umpires don't make the rules; they apply them. Nobody ever went to a ballgame to see the umpire.

Judge Roberts said that he aspired to a humble and limited role as leader of the Supreme Court, more akin to an umpire who calls the balls and strikes rather than the star player who is the center of attention. He vowed he would be a fair umpire and he used the baseball analogy to convey his view that the nation's highest court should play a more modest role in American government.

The little speech was a grand slam!

Today the questioning began with each Senator limited to 30 minutes. Being Senators they continued to preen and blather while Roberts continued to look judicial. When he finally got the chance to answer the five-minute-long questions Roberts hit the long ball every time. The entire transcript is published here.

The Democrats on the committee were clearly overmatched by Judge Roberts who could take them all on with half his brain tied behind his back. (thanks, Rush). And Roberts had a very good number two hitter in Arizona Senator John Kyl.

Following are excerpts from Kyl’s diary of the confirmation hearing.

KYL: The Democratic comments indicated that one of their key themes will be to applaud the policy "gains" of the past (court decisions) and seek Roberts' commitment not to "turn back the clock" on this progress. By gains they mean both legislation (like civil rights laws) and numerous court decisions (example: on "privacy rights" to support, among other things, abortion rights).

Sen. Diane Feinstein was especially concerned that Roberts not interpret the Constitution's Commerce Clause so narrowly as to prohibit robust federal government action. Another one of my Democratic colleagues asked: Will the nominee expand or contract freedom?

When can we say that a particular decision by the Supreme Court expands or contracts progress or freedom? Actually, it's more complicated as you stop and think about it.

For example, earlier this year, the Supreme Court issued a decision that allows the government to take one private individual's property to transfer that property to another private individual or entity. Is it really progress for one more politically influential private party to be able to use the government's power of eminent domain to take another less politically connected individual's property?

In 1975, the court issued an important decision giving public school students the right to a hearing before they're suspended for disciplinary reasons. The procedures, for example, for removing a disruptive student from the classroom have become sufficiently involved that in many cases the school simply doesn't do it. The student remains in class and the other students' learning suffers.

In 2003, the Supreme Court issued a decision that effectively prevents the government from outlawing child pornography if that pornography is made with computer-generated images of children. The effect of these decisions is that a whole class of child pornography effectively can't be prohibited. A world where these types of crimes occur with frequency is a world where parents are constantly afraid for their children, afraid to let them play outside alone, to go outside of their sight, even afraid to let them go on the Internet.

And I don't see this as an advance of freedom.

ROBERTS: Well, Senator, judges and justices do have a side in these disputes. They need to be on the side of the Constitution. And, in most of the areas, what the Constitution provides is that these sorts of policy debates -- which approach is better suited to promote freedom or to promote progress -- are vested in the legislative branch.

Your humble blogger is looking forward to the resumption of the hearings tomorrow. Unfortunately for the Dems, they have to field the same team.

Bear Flag League

Today I received the following email:

Dear William,Welcome!
You are now the newest official member of the Bear Flag League (BFL)!
I have successfully added your blog to the BFL blogroll.

The Bear Flag League is a consortium of Conservative bloggers who are current or former residents of the State of California.


We enjoy the camaraderie of our fellow Left Coast bloggers and the spirit and struggle of being in the minority as Conservatives living awash in a sea of Liberals.

Does this sound great, or what? I heard about BFL from new friend Jeff Lewis who says "you should see a jump in traffic to your site now."

Jeff has a blog called SoCal Law Blog that is listed among my favorites. Today's post is about Ellen Simonetti, a former Delta Air Lines flight attendant who says she was fired weeks after she posted photos of herself in uniform on her blog, Diary of a Flight Attendant. Ellen has filed a sexual discrimination lawsuit against the airline. Check it out on Jeff's blog.

You can find the BFL link as well as a list of 25 League blogs chosen at random on my list of links. Enjoy!!

Taking a Break

proof that God loves us
and wants us to be happy

….Ben Franklin



The never ending accusations and curses hurled at the President and his team in the aftermath of Katrina have sunk me into a state of dire funk. After three posts trying to debunk the vile nonsense, I decided to take a break and have some fun.

Right after morning coffee at Starbucks where we heard about Kristin’s opera career and I debated the evolution of species with Dr. Dave (some strange African fish seem to have evolved into a new species according to Dave), I headed down the hill to 24Hr Fitness. It being a Saturday my KRLA buds Prager, Medved and Hewitt are off the air - just when I need them - so I tuned to Pacifica Radio to listen in to some left wing chatter.

To my delight, Explorations in Science hosted by Michio Kaku, one of the founders of String Theory and a physics professor at CUNY, was playing. His guest was Chris Mooney author of the new book The Republican War on Science. Just what I needed!

Kaku: Tell us, Chris, about some of the Bush administration’s atrocities in their war on science.

Mooney: There’s just so much... global warming, stem cell research, abstinence education, global warming, environmental destruction, the war on condoms and evolution, global warming, teaching Intelligent Design, … Did I say global warming? The bastards!

Next was an interview with UVA law prof and pundit Rosa Brooks about the media coverage of the New Orleans flood. Rosa was delighted that the TV guys and gals were showing some emotion in their coverage. “We must maintain the outrage.”

For the first time, she said, those reporters were seeing how the poor actually live. Hello… no food, no water, nowhere to live or poop, no wonder they seem so defeated all the time. We owe them better than this! It seems that the reporters had come to the conclusion that refugee existence was about the normal life in the NOLA ghettos. But hold it right there: Those people are Americans, how dare you call them refugees.

I turned off the Sony, finished my workout, took a shower and then headed for the used book sale at the library. For $16 I bought hard cover editions of The Five People You Meet in Heaven (Mitch Albom), Men in Black (Mark Levin), The Book of Virtues (William Bennett) and John Adams (David McCullough).

Buying books on the cheap always makes me feel good.

Crimes Against Blacks

On the NBC-TV Hurricane Katrina fundraiser, rapper Kanye West whined that George Bush doesn't care about black people. Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, told the National Baptist Convention of America, that race played a role in the hurricane casualty numbers. I believe that those statements are themselves racist, slanderous and extremely harmful to America’s image.

I’m glad that Laura Bush spoke up:

I think all of those remarks are disgusting, to be perfectly frank, because of course President Bush cares about everyone in our country, the first lady said in an interview with American Urban Radio Networks.

I’m glad that Kanye West was loudly and lustily booed during last night's NFL kickoff show. The boos were thunderous and lasted for much of his number, reports the Boston Globe. (Drudge Report)

Unfortunately, the disgusting behavior reveals an ugly side of our culture. The Pew Research poll released yesterday reports that 66% of blacks believe that the government response to Katrina would have been faster if most of the victims were white (versus 17% of whites). It is clearly worth our effort to understand the root cause of this racial disparity.

Yesterday I was walking Cookie and listening to Hugh Hewitt discuss the social pathology on display in NOLA, when Hugh asked for a listener to send him the latest NOLA crime statistics. Cookie and I scooted home, I Googled NOLAPD, found the stats and shot them off to Hugh.

From Hugh Hewitt.com

New Orleans had 4,668 violent crimes committed within its borders in 2004. (HT: Palos Verdes Blog). Given this level of violent crime, was it not completely foreseeable that absent a major National Guard and police presence deployed in the city after the storm came through that there would be destructive looting and mayhem of a far more serious type?

The murder rate in NOLA is 5 times higher than New York City and 10 times higher than the national average. Given the population demographics in New Orleans it is not a surprise that most of the criminals are black as are most of the victims.

Bob Herbert, of the NY Times reports that Hurricane Katrina was preceded by many years in which the people of New Orleans (especially its poorest residents) were shamefully neglected by all levels of government. The public school system, for example, is one of the worst in the nation. About 10,000 of the 60,000 students were suspended last year, and nearly 1,000 were expelled. Half of the high school kids fail to graduate in four years.

New Orleans is one of the most liberal cities in America, a city run by Democrats for 60 years. The city is 75% black, the mayor is black, the police chief is black, most public officials are black. So why are the blacks so poorly off in this progressive model of a city?

Listen to the great black economist and author Thomas Sowell. The fundamental reason that many people do not rise is not that class barriers prevent it but that they do not develop the skills, values and attitudes which cause people to rise. The liberal welfare state means they don't have to, and liberal multiculturalism says they don't need to change their values because one culture is just as good as another. In other words, liberalism is not part of the solution, but part of the problem.

The same counterproductive and self-destructive attitudes toward education, work and ordinary civility found in many of America's ghettos can also be found in lower-class British communities. Anyone who doubts it should read British doctor Theodore Dalrymple's book Life at the Bottom, about the white lower class communities in which he has worked. These chaotic and violence-prone communities in Britain do not have the excuse of racism or a legacy of slavery. What they do have in common with similar communities in the United States is a similar reliance on the welfare state and a similar set of intellectuals making excuses for their behavior and denouncing anyone who wants them to change their ways.

Former Colorado Governor Richard D. Lamm once gave a stunning speech on how to destroy America. Paraphrasing Lamm: To destroy America invent multiculturalism and make it an article of belief that all cultures are equal. Establish an underclass with a 50% dropout rate from high school. Then create government entitlement programs and a cult of 'Victimology.' I would start a grievance industry blaming all minority failure on the majority population.

This is exactly what has happened in America since the days of the “war on poverty.” Liberal government programs have “invested” well over $5 Trillion on welfare programs while many of America’s ghettos sink to the level of New Orleans.

You tell me who is keeping the blacks on “Uncle Sam’s Plantation.” (Starr Parker)

Some Actual Facts About NOLA

There's been a ton of nonsense spewed by the media and the politicians about the New Orleans (NOLA) hurricane disaster. Here are some actual facts and a few opinions.

Fact: The founding fathers devised a federal system of government – one that has served us remarkably well through great disasters. The states have primacy in these instances.

Fact: Last year, four major hurricanes slammed into Florida. Governor Jeb Bush led the disaster response and did a remarkable job, with nothing happening like what we have seen in New Orleans.

Fact: In 1998, during a threat by Hurricane George, 14,000 New Orleanians were sent to the Superdome and theft and vandalism were rampant due to inadequate security.

Fact: A year ago, as Hurricane Ivan approached, New Orleans ordered an evacuation but did not use city or school buses to help people evacuate. As a result over 100,000 of the poorest citizens were unable to evacuate. Fortunately, the hurricane changed course and did not hit New Orleans.

Fact: NOLA Mayor Nagin was publicly warned of his inadequate city plans in an AP report titled, Ivan exposes flaws in N.O. disaster plans. Homeless advocacy groups insisted he make changes. The ACLU criticized the mayor, noting, "If the government asks people to evacuate, the government has some responsibility to provide an option for those people who can't evacuate and are at the whim of Mother Nature."

Fact: New Orleans has long known that a disaster could occur if a major hurricane hit the city. The City of New Orleans Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan states that orderly evacuation of the civilian population is the responsibility of the city – not the federal government. Nowhere is the president or federal government even mentioned.

Fact: The city's plan also specifically calls for the use of city-owned buses and school buses to evacuate the population and projected that 300,000 people would need transportation.

Fact: Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco refused to allow the federal government to take control of evacuation efforts. Late Friday evening the Bush administration sent Blanco a legal document asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans. Gov. Blanco rejected the request, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law.

Fact: The President also asked Mrs. Blanco to order a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans on Aug. 27 -- two days before the hurricane hit -- but she did not make the order until Aug. 28. Mr. Bush declared the entire state of Louisiana a disaster area 48 hours before the hurricane made landfall and ordered FEMA and military resources to deploy to the area.

Fact: Instead of evacuating the people, Mayor Nagin ordered the refugees to the Superdome and Convention Center without adequate security and no provisions for food, water and sanitary conditions. People died and were killed and raped in these facilities.

Fact: Mayor Nagin kept the city's school buses parked and locked in neat rows when there was still time to take the refugees to higher ground. The bright-yellow buses sit ruined now in four feet of dirty water.

Fact: When Hurricane Ivan barely missed the city of New Orleans, both the Governor and the Mayor took heat for the inconveniences they caused their population.

Opinion: Lives were needlessly lost in New Orleans due to the failure of Louisiana's governor, Kathleen Blanco, and the city's mayor, Ray Nagin. Perhaps their lethal dithering was due to the heat they took over the Ivan evacuation.

Fact: The spirit of the disaster was summed up by a gentleman called Mike Franklin, taking time out of his hectic schedule of looting to speak to the Associated Press: "People who are oppressed all their lives, man, it's an opportunity to get back at society."

Fact: Louisiana and New Orleans have been ruled by Democrats for 60 years. Yet the political corruption, institutional incompetence and poverty are legendary. Over a quarter of the population and a third of the black population receive welfare assistance.

Opinion: Perhaps it is time for Louisiana to consider if a Republican government might do a better job.

Fact: Despite the media and political attacks on the Bush administration, the people have not been fooled. A Gallup poll released today asked who is most responsible for the NOLA disaster. The results: Bush (13%), Federal Agencies (18%), State/Local government (25%), No one (38%), No opinion (6%).

Opinion: The 13% who blame Bush are the same ones who blamed him for 9/11, the tsunami, the death of Arafat and the bird flu; the same patriots who gave the US an unfavorable rating in the Pew Global poll. (See my post Some Interesting Statistics, 8/13/05).

More Lessons from Katrina

A natural disaster of Katrina’s magnitude brings into sharp focus the cultural divide in America. On the one side are the majority of Americans who rise to the occasion; more about them later. On the other side are the “victicrats” and the “blame America first” crowd who can’t even wait until the hurricane victims are rescued to begin pointing fingers, most pointedly at President Bush, then the federal government and the “rich” white folks.

It is now only a matter of hours after any catastrophe anywhere in the world -- a tsunami, a hurricane, a terrorist bombing, LOCUSTS – that Bush haters find ways to blame the President. Immediately after Hurricane Katrina the Bush haters pointed their fingers at global warming (Robert Kennedy, Jr.), the war on terror, the national guard being on duty in Iraq, the tax cuts, the US dependence on oil, and on and on. Forget nature. George W. Bush is more powerful. (Debra Saunders, San Francisco Chronicle).

The radical left even accuses the president of racism. It's been five days [waiting for federal help] because most of the people are black. America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off, as slow as possible -- and they've given them (national guard) permission to go down and shoot us! George Bush doesn't care about black people! (Kanye West on the NBC hurricane relief show).

In their hatred of Bush and, by extension, the majority of Americans, America haters join forces with the Islamic terrorists who rejoiced in America's misfortune, giving the storm a military rank and declaring that 'Private' Katrina had joined the global jihad. (Associated Press)

Victicrat Al Sharpton went on TV to say that looters are people who pay their taxes, whose infrastructure caved in on them. It’s fine with Sharpton to steal drugs and flat screen TVs because the country let them down. Sharpton’s answer: the looters were planning to use those things to barter for food and water. In a pig’s eye!

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin cries out for the federal government when he knows that it was his responsibility to evacuate those poor people before the flood, and he failed them. Unfortunately, many of those affected by Katrina have, in one way or another, been crying, "Where's the federal government?" all their lives. And their lives are more miserable for it. (Investors Business Daily).

There are now a few hundred thousand of the entitled class dispersed to cities such as Houston and Baton Rouge, overfilling the local welfare rolls and straining the social institutions. Many will never leave. Perhaps they will strive to lead productive lives now that they are removed from the crippling oppression of the New Orleans welfare plantation.

So what of the other America, the majority who pay their taxes, know that the federal government is elephantine in it’s response to local disasters, expect their local officials to be competent and still rely mostly on themselves and their neighbors? You know: those who live primarily in “red” cities. Well, read this letter from my good friend Betty.

My sister Mickey and her husband Wayne lost two homes, one off the beach in Biloxi and one in Ocean Springs, a car, and Wayne lost his beloved Harley. Talked to Mick today and they were standing in a Salvation Army line. This is the second time my sister and her husband have lost everything; they had a fire 10 years ago and had only the clothes on their backs. This time they saved the cat!

My brother Bud lost his business in Gautier. Bud is depressed because of the damage to Hucks - they may be able to reopen in the spring - plus he's worried about their employees. Fortunately for Bud and JoAnn, their home in Ocean Springs survived (go figure -- it's over 120 years old and barely standing) and they are all still there. No power, no water but the cell phones are starting to work. They are hot, tired and stinky.

Gasoline is scarce but Bud has a fire truck (boys and their toys) with two filled 50-gallon gasoline tanks so for now they are their own gas station. They plan to hold enough back so they can get out. Unfortunately, the generator uses diesel of which they are out. They stood in line yesterday for C-rations and also got some water and ice. Their attitudes are good and they are armed! Looters WILL be shot!

That's what is close to home. Everyone is alive and that is the most important thing. Everything else is just stuff!

I also know that the magnitude of this disaster was far greater than anything anywhere (other than the dropping of the A bomb). This is only the 6th day and already the response is making a difference. Let's hear it for the US government…… Betty

Pray for Betty's all-American family and for all the others who are in such great need. And send money to Feed the Children.

Lessons of Katrina

After the excesses of the French Revolution, Alexis de Tocqueville came to America in 1835 with an inherent mistrust of democracy. While here he studied the effects of political liberty and legal equality on Americans and came to admire American democracy. He concluded that the interests of individuals and those of their political representatives were unified by a thousand small bonds. Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” described a country that had won his heart.

However, Tocqueville recognized a potential danger that citizens might cede their independence to a benevolent government that labored for their happiness but “chose to be the sole agent and only arbiter of that happiness.” What would remain, he said, but to “spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living.”

Upon leaving America Tocqueville traveled to England and found that which he most feared. At that time Britain was the most prosperous country in Europe, if not the world, yet a sixth of the population was living on the public dole. “Memoirs on Pauperism” published later in 1835 recounted his observations of physical squalor coupled with moral and emotional degradation in the midst of prosperity.

Tocqueville rightly attributed this gross pauperism to the Elizabethan right to public assistance that was unique in Europe at that time. He realized that humans, as thinking beings, would tend to take advantage of entitlements leading to voluntary idleness. The resulting social pathology destroyed both kindness and gratitude and dissolved the social bonds that protected people from the worst.

Writing about contemporary Britain, Theodore Dalrymple (“Our Culture, What’s Left of It”) describes a country where “mass drunkenness, crude and violent relations between the sexes, unbridled hedonism leading to chaos and misery especially among the poor” are commonplace. Like Tocqueville, Dalrymple blames the welfare state, plus the bad example of intellectuals who believe that man is endowed with rights but no duties.

All during the 20th century liberal intellectuals preached that man should be freed from the shackles of social convention and self control. The rich usually have the means to overcome their poor choices. But the poor, the unemployed and the welfare recipient – those most in need of boundaries – suffer dearly from their own “progressive” behavior.

Tocqueville and Dalrymple would be saddened but not surprised by the scenes of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. “The looting and the apparent near-anarchy in the flooded streets have nothing to do with Mother Nature, and everything to do with human nature, unconstrained by the thin veneer of civilization.” (Thomas Lifson, The American Thinker)

This thin veneer separating civilization and chaos has collapsed. A National Guardsman was shot outside the arena. A Mississippi man murdered his own sister over a bag of ice. Several girls have been raped inside the Superdome in the midst of thousands of people. Thugs took pot shots at rescue helicopters.

“Then, of course, came the looting, the inevitable exploitation of misery that contributes the insult of human depravity to the injury of natural disaster, a piteous reminder that in the race to the bottom, even the most heinous of the elements are no match for the baser instincts of Man.” (Gerard Baker, London Times)

“There has been a descent so clear into indecency that one must address it as pressingly as the breakdown of the city's levees. It is as if the moral and civic "levees," too, were overwhelmed by the torrent. Once the waters have receded, New Orleans will face a task that will test our national mettle. A part of that task will be to ask why so many stooped so low as the waters rose so high.” (Tunku Varadarajan, Wall Street Journal)

But 165 years ago Tocqueville knew the source of the New Orleans social pathology. Approximately 25% of the people there receive welfare payments. Many of those who ignored the mandatory evacuation were waiting for their welfare checks that were to arrive yesterday. The murder rate in New Orleans is 10 times the national average. Loose living is the way of life in "The Big Easy."

The barriers that separate civilization from barbarism were as weak as the levees.