CommenTerry, February 16th, 2007
The initially-botched Katrina rescue and relief effort of 2005 has become an excuse for creating a cause celebre out of the notion that the wealthy and middle class in this country apologize to the poor. Left-wing demagogues seized it a as chance to unduly bash President Bush and to chide those of us who have had some success in life. Old-style liberals are used it as an opportunity to call for even more government-forced redistribution of wealth.
Yes, what happened in the days immediately following Hurricane Katrina was indeed tragic. However, it was due to incompetence on the part of federal, state, and local governments and certainly did not spring from some kind of ongoing conspiracy to oppress the poor. The fact of the matter is that the biggest majority of the poor got into that condition and/or remain that way because of their own actions and inactions. I've often heard it said that if all the wealth were suddenly taken from the rich and given to the poor, it wouldn't be long before most of the formerly rich would be rich again and most of the formerly poor would be poor again. There are reasons why some people poor and others are rich and, in this country at least, it has little to do with oppression.
I hope we all donated as much of our time and monetary resources as possible to the victims of this horrible disaster. We owed them our sympathy and our help. We did not and do not owe them any apologies.
