Katrina

"Katrina came and went with far less damage than anyone expected. It was the failure of the public infrastructure and the response to it that brought down civilization," wrote Lew Rockwell yesterday on his great website.

My heart goes out to the people of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama who need our support during this time of hardship. Especially to those who were herded into the Superdome like cattle and stripped of their right to self defense, thereby resulting in murders, rapes, and the mass devastation that inevitably ensues on a defensless population. For those who do not follow, I'm talking about gun grabbing. Some of the murders were committed directly by the very government personnel sent to help out.

The government's ineptness in this situation should not have suprised anyone. Of-course the usual finger pointing partisan hackery has begun. It amazes me that most people do not see this for what it is, a full scale government failure to successfully perform its number one job, protect the citizenry from large scale threats.

Katrina should be viewed as a learning experience. Government is not only the worst possible option to handle crisis management, it is the worst choice for crisis prevention. The faulty levees that could not hold the flood waters back were maintained by none other than the Army Corps of Engineers. Now I can not say with 100% certainty that the levees would have held up against the waters had they been in private hands, but we do know that the government failed us. The government does not have to be accountable for massive breakdowns such as this. Private companies must answer and be accountable for this kind of scenario. If they do not follow through with the services that their customers are demanding, they will lose that economic incentive and be replaced with some other entity that will. For a much more intelligent and in depth article on this topic I suggest reading Walter Block's most recent article about hurricane Katrina on Lewrockwell.com.

I pray that the American people wise up in the years to come and realize that government in general is to blame for the bulk of the devastion that is still occuring down there in New Orleans. Both the Bush administration and the democrats are to blame for the devastation going on down there. Our only hope is in private enterprise, which is ironically our method of choice when it comes to handling almost every other aspect of our lives. The areas of our life that are in the worst condition have the most government involvment, i.e. government schooling and health care. That is no coincidence.

Let us learn from this tragedy that government, no matter who is running it, is not competent enough to handle this kind of situation.