The blame game for Hurricane Katrina in general and New Orleans in particular is now in full swing. All involved in witch-hunting right now should be deeply ashamed of themselves. It is apparently too much to expect that we can come together as a nation to bring aid to the stricken Gulf Coast. We’re obviously still in the
Third Turning[*1] , not the
Fourth[*2] .
Here’s the short list of the disgraceful finger-pointing still going on while the waters are still high in New Orleans:
Global warming.
Bush.
Allah’s will.
Bush.
God’s vengeance for not passing the Kyoto agreement.
Bush.
Corporate America.
Bush.
Red states that voted for Bush.
That’s the short version of the survey of blame comments assembled by Chrenkoff[*3] (Click and read, highly recommended).
Let’s add sin, drunkenness, revelry, and abortion to the list. The folks at Reason Hit and Run[*4] have a live one in something called “Repent America”[*5]
“Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city,” stated Repent America director Michael Savagers. “From ‘Girls Gone Wild’ to ‘Southern Decadence,’ New Orleans was a city that had its doors wide open to the public celebration of sin. From the devastation may a city full of righteousness emerge,” he continued.
New Orleans is also known for its Mardi Grass parties where thousands of drunken men revel in the streets to exchange plastic jewelry for drunken women to expose their breasts. This annual event sparked the creation of the “Girls Gone Wild” video series. In addition, Louisiana had a total of ten abortion clinics with half of them making their home in New Orleans. At these five abortion clinics in the city, countless numbers of children were murdered at the hands of abortionists.
That man Bush “akes a lot of joy about losing people” according to Air America’s Randi Rhodes, as reported by Little Green Footballs[*6] via Radio Equalizer[*7] :
“This President is never gonna do the right thing. I think somewhere deep down inside him he takes a lot of joy about losing people, if he thinks they vote Democrat or if he thinks they’re poor, or if he thinks they’re in a blue state, whatever his reasons are not to rescue those people who are (planning?) for their safety.”
Thank you, Randi, for your contribution to civil public discourse.
Daniel Kenning, in Wall Street Journal’s opinion journal[*8] wants to blame bureaucrats in general:
Big public bureaucracies are going to get us killed. They already have. One may argue that this is an inevitable result of living in an advanced and complex democracy. Yes, up to a point. An open political system indeed breeds inefficiencies (though possibly the Deb Bush administration that dealt with Hurricane Andrew is more competent than Gov. Blanc’s team in Louisiana). And perhaps low-lying, self-indulgent New Orleans understood its losing bargain with a devil’s fate.
You may or may not agree, but at least he didn’t blame global warming.
Not everyone is succumbing to panicked finger-pointing. Roy Spencer at Tech Central Station[*9] tries to take a higher road:
Given the recent work, how should we view the role of global warming? First, we know that category 4, and even category 5, storms have always occurred, and will continue to occur, with or without the help of humans, as the above examples demonstrate. Therefore, if we are prepared for what nature can throw at us, we will be prepared for the possible small increase in hurricane activity that some studies have suggested could occur with man-made global warming. To suggest that Katrina was caused by mankind is not only grossly misleading, it also obscures the real issues that need to be addressed, even in the absence of global warming. From a practical point of view, there is little that we can do in the near term to avert much if any future warming anyway, no matter what you believe that warming will be, including participating in the Kyoto Protocol. So why even bring it up (other than through political, philosophical, or financial motivation)?
Bill Clinton sounds a note of moderation[*10] , via Captain’s Quarters blog:
CLINTON: Yes, I think that’s important to point out. Because when you say that they should have done this, that or the other thing first, you can look at that problem in isolation, and you can say that.
But look at all the other things they had to deal with. I’m telling you, nobody thought this was going to happen like this. But what happened here is they escaped — New Orleans escaped Katrina. But it brought all the water up the Mississippi River and all in the Pontchartrain, and then when it started running and that levee broke, they had problems they never could have foreseen.
And so I just think that we need to recognize right now there’s a confident effort under way. People are doing the best they can. And I just don’t think it’s the time to worry about that. We need to keep people alive and get them back to life — normal life.
Thank you, Mr. President.
