Posted by
N2Win on Tuesday, June 24, 2008 12:00:00 AM
Five states were severly impacted by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Four out of the five states simply took the hits, picked themselves up by their boot straps and began rebuilding their communities and cities. So what happened to the fifth? Lack of self-reliance. This lack of self-reliance was summed up when one resident proclaimed on national television (which only appeared once) "when the gubment gonna help me?"
I feel bad for this person, I really do. Her sense of entitlement was so great that she would just as soon sit in water up to her neck and wait for the feds to provide her with dry ground, food, water and clothing instead of seeking it out for herself. This was not a person of significant age or physical disability which would prevent them from acting on their own. In contrast there was another story (which aired only once) where a man stole a bus and drove himself, his family and six other families to Texas to get the things they needed to survive. He collected gas money from from the other riders as they needed it to make the trip. Many people are going to hit only on the fact the he "stole" a school bus. I say more power to him. Drastic circumstances need drastic solutions. Another situation that I witnessed first hand in NOLA was of people taking shots at helicopters when they approached to try and rescue these people from their roof tops. A simple Thank You would suffice!! AmTrak and Greyhound bus lines offered their services to Nagin and Blanco, BOTH refused these servies to get the people out of the city. Later on, the chocolate city voted Nagin BACK in office!!!! My point in all of this is that it seemed appearent to me that a lifetime of welfare entitlements wiped out a natural and inherent safeguard called self-reliance. On another note, when hurricane Camile hit the Gulf Coast I was six years old. We salvaged our posessions, cleared the debris and counted our blessings. Then we moved on to our neighbors house to help them do the same. And so it went until the community was back up and running. Hurricane Fredrick hit when I was in my teens. Again, we salvaged what we could, cleared the debris and counted our blessings and moved on to help our neighbors do the same until the community was running again. Not once did it enter into my mind that I needed to wait for the "gubment to come help me". Just an observation from my perspective.