Leaving The Poor Behind

CRITICS OF the president are shocked that in the evacuation of New Orleans before hurricane Katrina the poor were left behind. Said Senator Kennedy: “those people who had cars and money got out, and those people who were impoverished died.”

Well, Senator, and whose fault is that?

The ground theme of the conservative movement of the last half-century is that if you encourage helplessness, and sustain helpless people in their helplessness with programs and pensions, as the welfare state does, then you will increase the number of people who are “impoverished.”

New Orleans, according to Brendan Miniter, is a poster child for the welfare state.

The welfare state failed the residents of the Lower Ninth Ward and other flooded New Orleans neighborhoods long before the levees gave way. This gets us back to the question Sen. Kennedy wants Judge Roberts to answer about whether to adopt a narrow view that prevents real progress from taking place. And it also explains the role Mayor Ray Nagin and Gov. Kathleen Blanco--both Democrats--played in leaving mostly poor, minority citizens in a city that was clearly descending into chaos.

So let us ask another question. How could, how in the name of the poor that have voted for Democrats ever since the dawn of time, how could Democratic politicians like Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco have left the poor to perish in New Orleans?

We know the answer to that. The fact is that the Democrats instinctively like the poor to be concentrated in the inner cities and helpless. If they were prosperous and self-reliant, they would move out and start voting for Republicans, and we can’t have that.

So how are we going to help the people left behind next time? Writes Miniter:

Are we going to try another big-government program and expect better results this time? Or are we now going to realize that ownership is the most likely path to the middle class? School vouchers can help poor parents take ownership of their children’s education and finally break the grip teachers unions have on the public schools. Health savings accounts and private accounts for Medicaid and Social Security will give those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder the skills as well as the assets necessary to climb higher. In late August the levees broke in New Orleans. But the welfare state had left the poor stuck in the mud long before that.

Amen to that.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

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Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

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Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

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What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
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