Entitlement, The Nanny State, New Orleans and Katrina Recovery

One of my fellow bloggers, Texas Fred, has posted two very interesting articles in recent days.

The first post here illustrates the ongoing, generational welfare entitlement attitude held by a portion of the New Orleans residents who can't seem to get off their butts and get their lives in order without believing they are entitled to endless government handouts.

The second post here illustrates another portion of the New Orleans residents, those who have stood up, yanked on their boots, gotten their lives in order, cleaned up their communities and gone on with their lives, without waiting for the government to step in and bail them out.

Neither group is white nor rich. Both groups are minorities (although one group is the predominant majority in New Orleans, essentially "flipping" the national "norm").

One of the most mis-attributed quotes we've heard a lot of lately is this:

"A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have. (often attributed to Barry Goldwater; however, was taken from Gerald Ford who used it in a Presidential address to a joint session of Congress on August 12, 1974)".

In the past week or so, we've heard a lot of nonsense regarding the California fires and the government's response thereto. Frankly, I'm sick of the whining coming out of New Orleans about the only reason California had such excellent response was because the victims are "white", "rich", "Republican", etc.

The truth of the matter is California has to deal with wildfires on a yearly basis. They have the responders and the action plan in place. They drill on those action plans. They prepare, hoping they never have to use their skills, but ready when called upon to do so. They have the chain of command in place and it's followed, like a well-oiled machine.

The population listen to their radios and tv's, paying attention to news alerts; they pack up their cars, prepare their pets, pack up their treasures so they aren't lost in the oncoming disaster, and when they are told to evacuate, they go. They protect their homes and valuables with insurance so the government doesn't have to rebuild their homes for them. Often, they lose their homes. Sometimes, they're lucky and their homes are spared.

They don't sit on their asses, watching disaster approach, waiting for the government to bail them out rather than taking some personal initiative and getting themselves, their loved ones, pets, etc. out of harm's way. They don't look to a corrupt mayor and governor to rescue their asses. Once disaster DOES hit, they don't roam the streets looting everything in sight. They don't take shelter in a sports stadium and trash it, committing felonies on their fellow victims.

The difference in the behaviour of the two groups of people in their respective stadiums couldn't be more telling. One group finishes the job a devastating hurricane started--and while they're busy finishing trashing the stadium, raping, robbing and in one or two rumored instances, murdering their fellow victims. No provisions made for emergency situations, even though the stadium was an obvious choice to shelter a large number of victims--none. Over in California, people were orderly, provision had been made for emergency situations, people pulled together, hotels donated shelter and food. All recognized they were in, essentially, the "same boat" (no pun intended) and pulled together for each other, not turning on each other like animals.

The bottom line? Both areas of the country suffered devastating disasters.

One area of the country, rotten to the core with corruption, is still trying to recover and get things under control, hampered by corruption and flat out laziness, perpetuated by a governmental nanny state and generational welfare wherein no one is responsible or accountable for even their own lives--they simply do not have the pride, the wherewithal, the motivation or the incentive to think for themselves and pick themselves up, dust themselves off and get down to the four letter word of 'W O R K" to get their lives back on track. It's been bred out of them. What's been bred INTO them is the blame game--blame all their misfortunes on anyone and everyone other than themselves.

The race card, the victim card, all of it is someone else's fault because they're black, or they're poor or they're whatever--just as long as they don't have to look into a mirror and see themselves reflected back. No one forced them to sit on their asses waiting for evacuation. No one forced them to act like turkeys that are too stupid to come in out of the rain and therefore "drown". No one forced them to loot, rob, rape and murder, thereby exacerbating an already horrendous situation. No one forced them to sit on their lazy asses waiting for the government to bail them out. The only ones who "forced" them was THEMSELVES and their own irresponsibility, laziness, their liberal brainwashing. The only ones "forcing" them to "stay down" now, while waiting for that government bail out at your and my expense, is themselves.

The other area of the country was prepared, well prepared and was able to implement its emergency plan in a well-rehearsed manner, thereby saving lives, if not property. No one is expecting the government to bail them out, they have provided for their needs themselves. they engage in that four letter word, "W O R K", prepare, follow evacuation procedures, etc.

It has NOTHING to do with being "white", "rich" or "Republican". It has everything to do with accountability, responsibility, maturity, pride, motivation, etc. It has everything to do with either expecting the government to be everything to you and providing you with everything from cradle to grave or getting off your lazy ass and doing for yourself.

That's the deal between a hurricane that hit a below sea level city, that the residents knew was coming, and did nothing to help themselves and a conflagration that again, residents knew was coming and did everything to help themselves.

And recovery? Ah, now we're back to Fred's posts.

It seems ALL we hear about regarding Katrina is the bad. We rarely, if ever, hear about those who have successfully put their lives back together and gone on. It doesn't make for very interesting news, you see, and it doesn't serve the media bias in the MSM.

But there is a success story to Katrina and that is within the Vietnamese community. From Fred's post today:

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - The view from Kinh Nguyen’s front door these days is nothing like the “abandoned cemetery” she saw upon returning to her New Orleans neighborhood two months after Hurricane Katrina.

Gone are the blue tarps and plywood boards that covered storm-damaged homes in Village de l’Est, a mostly Vietnamese-American neighborhood. Nguyen’s lawn, which turned dark brown after briny floodwaters killed her grass, is now a lush green. Streets once littered with storm debris are as clean and pothole-free as any in the city.

“They’re all back,” Nguyen, a 45-year-old mother of four, said of her neighbors. “Every home looks nicer, newer.”

Village de l’Est’s rebound has been a remarkable success story in this misery-stricken city. At the same time, for better or worse, the hurricane has brought profound political and cultural change to the community.

And:

An estimated 90 percent of the 25,000 Vietnamese-Americans who lived in southeastern Louisiana before Katrina had returned within two years of Katrina’s onslaught, according to community leaders. They were among the first to start rebuilding their homes and reopening their businesses, and their community is recovering much more rapidly than some other parts of New Orleans.

Like many of her neighbors, Kinh Nguyen didn’t wait for the government’s help to repair her home, a modest, ranch-style house. She moved her family back in in March 2006, about 18 months before she received a federal housing grant.

Now. I don't want to hear about slavery, reparation or any other piece of crap nonsense. I don't want to hear "whitey owes it" to the "black man". I don't want to hear "lack of educational opportunities". I don't want to hear you grew up in a dysfunctional family, or your neighborhood was bad or any one of a kazillion excuses utilized for your behaviour other than the obvious one--you're too damn lazy to do anything for yourself and you expect me to pay the taxes to take care of you and your drug dealing, hip-hopping, gang-banging, procreating ad nauseum sorry asses. I plain don't want to hear it.

Why? Because it's old. It's whiny. It's bullshit. And here's why.

Contrary to the revisionist history you were taught at that public school, your people were not the only people enslaved or oppressed. Whites (read: "Irish") were enslaved and oppressed as well. So were Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Taiwanese,--an entire host of Asiatic peoples. Currently, many millions of Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese and Taiwanese, to name a few, are enslaved, starving, brutally hunted down and slaughtered in absolutely horrific ways.

Many come here.

Perhaps if you were to google the "Fall of Saigon in 1975" you would get an honest report of the refugees and boat people that came here after the democratic-led congress cut off funding for our troops and we had to leave, never having lost a ground war or battle in Vietnam, but losing the war here at home. Perhaps you would learn about the Vietnamese who literally escaped with nothing more than their lives to come here, crossing the ocean in flimsy, overloaded boats.

People who were terrified of the regime left in power by the complicity of our own congress, led by those democrats you so admire. Did they know English? Often, no. Did they have homes to come to? Families waiting for them? Any idea where their next meal was coming from? Again, in most instances, no.

And what did these people do? They assimilated, became citizens, learned the language. While they were doing that, they found shelter. They found jobs. They worked their asses off. They opened businesses. They saved their money and brought relatives over, one by one. They supported each other within their families, each family member owning a business and each family member supporting one another.

They came from NOTHING. Literally NOTHING. And they made successes of themselves by their own hard work, their own pride, in themselves, their homes, their adopted country. They reveled in the freedoms they gained and they produced and gave back to the communities. Their children entered school, often hampered by linguistic barriers, and through sheer force of will, those children succeeded--often spectacularly.

They didn't wait for government handouts. They PRODUCED. And Katrina is a small example of this will to survive, to succeed, to achieve. They were hit just as hard as the blacks. But their community is nearly rebuilt, bigger, better, cleaner. In the same amount of time the blacks have had, waiting for handouts, the Vietnamese have assessed the situation, pulled on their boots and taken care of business. They didn't hand their lives over to government control; they took control of their own lives, their own responsibility to rebuild, their own accountability.

And they have succeeded.

So, why do we hear nothing but the bad coming out of New Orleans, focused on Jackson and Sharpton, the civil rights bullshit and how the government has let the people down? Because that's what fits the agenda.

While looking for pictures to illustrate this post, I ran across a very interesting spot, Katrinablog.org. Here's a sampling of both the victim/race mentality as well as an exemplary spotlight on the advantage this author took of the educational opportunities afforded--to both the author as well as his Vietnamese counterpart:

first of all i would like to send out my regards to those who lost there lives or those trying to regain theres in hurricane katrina after all it has been christmas and i wish them all a happy (if thats possible) new year.


this site was made to point out the faults in what seems to be a stable society that is only glossed over because the government doesnt want people to know whats going on, only to then complain when the worst happens.


i can only point this out through the disaster of hurricane katrina, its nearly half a year since the hurricane hit the bahamas and then went on to reap its way through parts of america and still people are trying to find loved ones and are struggling to rebuild there lives, why you ask because some people are more concerned with stopping tyrants thousands of miles away and fighting wars that have no meaning, than say helping communitys in its back garden.


what i really dont get though is how can a countrys government which claims to have some of the best technology in the world not moniter and pre-empt the course of a hurrican the day it formed. i mean it hit the bahamas first and it was widely noted there what its predicted course would be, where was the evacuations, where was the help, there was none.


it seems yeat again that we are failed by leaders who are so ego driven that they cannot see past their nose to the damage they've caused and show no sincerety in the remorse for the people involved.


our love goes out to those who were involved in katrina and we wish them a happier year than the last.

Is that the worst piece of anti-government, "give me my gubment handout now" bullshit you've ever read? Where did this person spend the time he was supposed to be in school? It's obvious he couldn't be bothered to attend any kind of english class.

It's certainly not something you see written by his Vietnamese counterpart. It does illustrate where the nanny state will take us.

Go read Fred's articles here and here. Then contrast it with Katrinablog.org here.

Who would you rather be associated with? I would rather be with the people who exemplify what this country stands for, the Vietnamese, and their indomitable will to survive and thrive, succeed and achieve. What about you?

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