Sowell on the Chaos in New Orleans

I've always admired Thomas Sowell's writing and clarity of thought. In today's RealClearPolitics, he discusses how our society's departure from moral tradition helped contribute to the chaos in New Orleans:

"When all is said and done, government is ultimately just human beings -- politicians, judges, bureaucrats. Maybe the reason we are so often disappointed with them is that they have over-promised and we have been gullible enough to believe them.

Government cannot solve all our problems, even in normal times, much less during a catastrophe of nature that reminds man how little he is, despite all his big talk.

The most basic function of government, maintaining law and order, breaks down when floods or blackouts paralyze the system.
During good times or bad, the police cannot police everybody. They can at best control a small segment of society. The vast majority of people have to control themselves. (emphasis added)

That is where the great moral traditions of a society come in -- those moral traditions that it is so hip to sneer at, so cute to violate, and that our very schools undermine among the young, telling them that they have to evolve their own standards, rather than following what old fuddy duddies like their parents tell them.

Now we see what those do-it-yourself standards amount to in the ugliness and anarchy of New Orleans."

Thousands of people have pitched in to help the people of the Gulf Coast, but in the media, the focus is on the blame game. Could things have been done better? Sure. But what good does it do now to point fingers. Any sort of blaming is only being done for political gain and not for any improvement in future preparedness.

The real lessons that need to come out of this is, as Sowell points our above, to help your neighbor. Build community and be prepared. Stop relying on the government - local, state, federal - to do it for you.

As the fourth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, we will remember the heroics of the passengers on flight 93 who did not lament the fact that the governement couldn't stop the hijackers, but instead took action to save other's lives. We need more of this attitude today.

We will remember this tragedy and, for a short time, change our ways to help ensure it doesn't happen again. But as the years go by, we'll get complacent. We'll forget the images of looters and bodies lying on overpasses. We'll go back to our own lives, relying on the government to provide what we should provide for ourselves. When the next great natural disaster hits, be it another hurricane or the Big One in California, we'll blame the government for not doing enough to save us from ourselves.