Paxety Pages

In the aftermath of Katrina, chaos rules.

For most of the residents of New Orleans, the experience has been one of gut wrenching loss, deprivation, and misery. But not for all. For human predators, this is a feast of anarchy.

The corpse has burst open and the jackals - heretofore kept at bay - have emerged from their lairs to feast on a bonanza of jewelry, TVs, clothes, tennis shoes, and guns, and to feed on the bodies of their neighbors, prey on the weak, and, as if all that is not enough, to attack those who would bring relief to their victims. Would-be rescuers have been shot, shot at, and boat-jacked; looting is rampant; numerous rapes and murders have been reported to have occurred.

Note well, Katrina did not create this horde of barbarians living in our midst - she merely provided them with a suitable element in which to reveal themselves. And if you have the misfortune to live near a metro area with lots of public housing, then, once the structure of authority is removed from the inner city, you can also expect roving bands of urban thugs with axes and guns coming to your door.

What is happening in New Orleans today is the kind of scenario that would have been unimaginable thirty or forty years ago. But of course, those were less enlightened times.

Chairman Mao (may he eternally roast in hell - and soon have fidel to play dominos with) made the pithy statement that "No people are ever more than three meals away from a revolution." So, are these people the long-awaited revolutionary forces now striking out for the ill-fed and mistreated?

In a word, no. These urban thugs are the progeny of liberal wet dreams, in particular the fantasy that you can give and give to people with no expectation of a return from them and still produce a responsible, socially adjusted individual. Let's be honest: These urban thugs are the people for whom the schools were integrated, for whom affirmative action was forced on society, the ones forced busing was invented for; they have been the beneficiaries of the increasing leniency from the courts, school classes were dumbed-down for them, text books re-written to reflect a cultural paradigm deemed suitable for them, for whom expectations have been lowered, SAT scores manipulated, and college admission requirements refined. They are the ones for whom corporeal punishment was dropped in the schools. (Early on, since black children tended to have more discipline problems in school than children of other races, this was deemed the result of racism - ditto disparate test scores, etc.)

Countless well-meaning programs have been formed in an effort to fortify their self-esteem, and innumerable weeping sociologists have written innumerable position papers apologizing for their "lack of social adjustment" and "lack luster academic performance." The coda is always: It's not their fault, it’s societies' (i.e., yours and mine), so please send us more money, more benefits.

Yet, the more things have improved in society, the more they (and their support group) have complained. The more society freely gives them, the more they demand. For the politician looking for a humanitarian cause to espouse and exploit, the inner city is a boondoggle. And for the civil rights pimps, they provide an eternal opportunity to jump in and blame the failures of urban culture on the rest of society. However, I have yet to see Jesse I-am-somebody Jackson, or Al Sharpton, walking down the streets of New Orleans in wading boots beseeching looters to drop stolen good and thugs to abandon their guns. But Jesse may find all the photo ops there irresistible. I'm sure he will show soon - perhaps after the police, National Guard, or the army - those organs of Western racist oppression - have quieted things down a bit.

This society has made an extraordinary effort to understand, modify, and improve the behavior of the black urban male. The result: armed thugs shooting at rescuers in New Orleans. Deny it or not, spin it or not, reverse the blame to the Republicans, claim not enough money or effort has been expended yet - do what you will - but it is still an inescapable fact that these ghetto-rats in New Orleans are the personification of the failure of liberal social policies of the past four decades. The ghetto rabble currently roaming New Orleans are the hypostasis of the worse elements of the welfare culture, A.K.A., the Great Society; they are, in fact, the grandchildren of the Great Society - the natural result of government giving without requiring anything in return. Billions of dollars taken from hard-working Americans and spent on ‘feel-good’ government programs stand behind each and every thug in New Orleans who is now - when not too busy looting - shooting at police and rescue helicopters.

The thugs of New Orleans are the products of a hate-driven, excuse-making culture, a culture obsessed with the frivolities of life. And though there is an absence of male authority figures in their community, it isn't a matriarchal culture. It is a culture devoted to and controlled by the adolescent black urban male; it is an urban version of Lord Of The Flies; a culture that is driven by street gangs whose concerns are with the ephemeral, who live only for the immediate gratification of their whims, whose lingo reflects the rapidly changing jargon of youth, and who have zero compassion for others.

Is there anything we can do to lessen the chances of seeing scum like this walking American streets with impunity again? Perhaps. The left in America has produced a culture of dependency that thrives in our urban centers. In self-preservation we should drain the pond that produces this scum: the welfare mega-projects that litter our cities. We should stop rewarding the unwed teenage girls, and the professional welfare mothers who have multiple children, with free rent and food. You cannot instill responsibility in a person, much less in a culture of dependency, if you do not demand responsibility from them.

Do I expect this to be done? Hell no. It would be racially insensitive, and politically incorrect, to even admit that ‘urban’ people should be required to demonstrate responsibility and obey even the basics tenets of civil order. Hence, we will continue and continue to pay for a class of merciless killers who thrive on the largess provided by the sob sisters of our culture.

We have descended into the abyss. New Orleans is just a preview of the future, a third-world America. On the whole, America's urban poor are not amenable to logical persuasion or emotional appeal. They thrive on the path of least resistance, which is as unproductive and ungrateful wards of the state. Welcome to the new plantation. They have not availed themselves to the educational opportunities provided by society, and are not stimulated by the benefits of a free-market society (the drug trade excepted). In New Orleans, they have shown their true face: a hostile anti-social force - chaos, armed and merciless. If they have a bond of kinship with anyone, it is with the armed kat-chewing youth in Africa. They respond only to the brutality of the tribal ethic, not to the refinements and requirements of a constitutional republic.

It takes village? I'd sure as hell hate to live in that village.

Oh, what the socialist left has wrought. If this was the goal of the Great Society - and the billions of dollars we have poured into the inner city to implement it - then somewhere in hell Lyndon Baines Johnson must be pulling the ears of devils in glee and joyful celebration.

I fully realize that I don't live in my America anymore. I live at the beginning of the end, the rule of tribal ethics, roving armed adolescent gangs tit-fed since they were babies on dependence on a political system while at the same time being imbued by their mommies and ‘extended family’ with a seething hatred of the very system that sustains them.

Meanwhile, the real sob-sisters, the mis-directed but dependable conscience of the left, will continue to apologize for their execrable behavior. The rest of the left are already busy spinning paranoid theories that blame Bush (he actually had the levy wall blown up so he could grandstand in New Orleans) and other Republican administrations for the social implosions that rightfully should be laid at their own feet.

We have flirted with evil. We have plied it with rehabilitation programs, lettered professors have made excuses for it, and we volleyed cannonades of money at it. We have bribed it. It has grown. Today, there is a schism, an unbridgeable gulf, between urban amerika and the rest of us. But I fear, since political futures and political power are vested in empowering the welfare culture, that we are either headed for total destruction as a society or a testing and liberating fire that may make the Civil War seem like a tea party. New Orleans may be the first shot in that war.

I carry, or usually have immediate access to, a gun. I don't hunt. I don't target shoot. I carry it because the government has proven incapable of protecting me and my family from the barbaric, uneducated urban thugs that it has nurtured for several generations in the social cesspools called public housing projects. Since the first reports started coming in from New Orleans, I've been thinking of buying a bigger gun.

Will the left ever open their eyes to the evil they have let loose on this country? Don’t hold your breath. Not even when the armed hordes show up at their homes and start battering down their doors with axes will they admit culpability. Their last words will probably be: "Just look at these poor guys. Their self-esteem must be at an all time low. Gee, if only we’d spent more money on the midnight-basketball programs."