Responsibility for Katrinas Aftermath

It has been more than a month since hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast. Naturally there have been plenty of people popping out of the wood work to fix blame for the hurricane.

If you are a liberal democrat it is obvious that responsibility lay with George W. Bush (just because). If you were a leader of the black community responsibility lay with racists such as George W. Bush for throwiing a hurricane at New Orleans in order to flood out poor black people. If you were a resident of New Orleans responsibility lay with the governments because George W. Bush is the president and as we all know, that is just wrong!

The interesting thing about responsibility however is that it always comes back to the individual. We, as citizens of the United States and of our respective states and communities, delegate authority for providing many services to the government. We delegate to the government the authority to tax us to provide for police and fire protection and to provide for the common defense of the nation. But notice that we do not delegate responsibility. In fact we can't delegate the responsibility!

The United States government IS NOT responsible for your safety and well being. Your state government IS NOT responsible for your safety and well being. You local community IS NOT responsible for your safety and well being. You and you alone bear the responsibility for your safety and well being. If you are a head of house-hold or a parent you have the additional responsibility to take care of your family. You can delegate to the government the authority to assist you in this endeavor but the responsibility remains yours. The courts have consistantly held this to be the case. Were it not the case, every community in the United States would be bankrupted by the law suits resulting from their failure to protect citizens from criminals or to protect them from fires.

If your plan for taking care of your family is to dial 911 when the going gets rough, good luck...just don't look to me for sympathy when you come to grief, and please don't look to me to bail you out financially. You may think that you live in an area that is immune from the kind of devistation that was wrought upon the Gulf Coast. I suggest you look around your community. You may be surprised at what you find. How many industrial sites are there that use hazardous materials in large quantities? How many trucks pass through your community loaded with hazardous materials? Are there nuclear facilities up wind of you? How about military installations with hazardous stores of chemical or biological munitions?

Even if you live far from all of these sorts of hazards on high ground in an earth quake free area, what is your plan if the H5N1 asian bird flu makes the leap to human transmission? Experts put the world wide death toll at up to 300,000,000! You read that right...300 million people could die and there is no vacine. What of a man made biological disaster resulting from a terrorist attack? There is no place in the United States that is immune from catastrophy. You need to be prepared to take care of yourelf and your family. You need to have supplies on hand a plan in place in case you need to shelter in your home or hit the road and escape the area of devestation.

As we saw in the news reports out of New Orleans, the government may not be there to help. Its not their job...