Back of the Envelope

As I have family in Louisiana, I paid a lot of attention to Katrina. By the middle of the week, it was all everyone was talking about, how badly [Bush/Nagin/congress--choose your political preference] had failed. Every time I tried to turn attention towards doing something (say, donating to Red Cross), I'd find my words falling on deaf ears, as they all seemed more interested in using the situation in their political arguments rather than doing something about it.

Anyway, I've known for a while that the situation, while bad, wasn't as terrible as the news media made it out to be, and I'm always interested in reporting which gives a more balanced view of events. This report from Real Clear Politics demonstrates once again why bloggers do better than the MSM every time:

Remember the dozens, maybe hundreds, of rapes, murders, stabbings and deaths resulting from official neglect at the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina? The ones that never happened, as even the national media later admitted?

Sure, we all remember the original reporting, if not the back-pedaling.

Here's another one: Do you remember the dramatic TV footage of National Guard helicopters landing at the Superdome as soon as Katrina passed, dropping off tens of thousands saved from certain death? The corpsmen running with stretchers, in an echo of M*A*S*H, carrying the survivors to ambulances and the medical center? About how the operation, which also included the Coast Guard, regular military units, and local first responders, continued for more than a week?
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Me neither. Except that it did happen, and got at best an occasional, parenthetical mention in the national media. The National Guard had its headquarters for Katrina, not just a few peacekeeping troops, in what the media portrayed as the pit of Hell. Hell was one of the safest places to be in New Orleans, smelly as it was. The situation was always under control, not surprisingly because the people in control were always there.
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Except for the Coast Guard's brilliant performance, which saved up to 30,000 lives, most of the rescue operation was run by local National Guard middle management, combat tested in Iraq, accustomed to hardship, and intimately familiar with the city. (In fact, as I previously reported, Guard members rescued other Guard members, who then reported for flight duty.) The junior officers munched the same unappetizing but adequate rations as everyone else at the Dome. They were struggling to catch a few winks when they could in the garage level under the LZ, with concrete chips raining down on them when the Chinooks landed and rattled the decking.

Like everyone except the TV anchors, they squatted to do their business in the nearest stairwell. "You just walked down the steps, and when you hit water, there you were," Major Dressler recalls fondly. "We had a little boy's stairwell, and a little girl's stairwell."

They were, in other words, on the scene, and they knew exactly the grotesqueries in the Dome and in the rest of the city. The priorities were search, rescue and lifesaving, not the comfort level of survivors they rescued who they knew would survive somehow if they sorted out the sick from the healthy. It looked brutal on TV, but it was effective, giving a whole new meaning to that venerable military cliché "quick and dirty."

Now why didn't we hear about this when it happened?

Doc has one of the most cogent explanations of why excessive amounts of immigration, even legal, is a dangerous thing:

Large immigrant groups form ghettos. They all move in together into communities where everyone is from the same area and they all speak the same language. There are strong practical reasons for this, but it slows down assimilation. This is a problem for several reasons. First, it is a drain on the economy to have populations that can't speak to each other. When was the last time that you tried to tell your office janitor about some special cleaning that needed to be done? If your office is like ours, you eventually had to call the building manager, who had to find someone who spoke Spanish, turning a one-minute conversation into a twenty-minute project involving four people. Ghettos also lead to organized crime because these communities tend to be insular and untrusting of the police and other government workers (who often don't understand the community anyway). This often leads to people living in America under the same kind of oppressive and violent patronage system they came here to escape.

But most importantly, assimilation into American culture is important because these people come from failed cultures. After all, if their own culture had produced security and freedom and wealth like our culture has produced, why would they be flooding in here? So we have millions of people flooding into this country from failed cultures and bringing their failed culture with them. They bring tribal loyalties and feuds, they bring nepotism and cronyism, they bring bribery and other forms of official corruption, they bring racism and sexism (I mean real racism and sexism, not the minor complaints that pass for racism and sexism in the US), they bring oppressive and intolerant religions (again, the real thing, not what whiny leftists complain about), and they brig a lax regard for honesty in business dealings and a lax regard for law. I'm not saying that all immigrants bring all these things, but all immigrant groups from failed cultures bring several of these things.

He continues: "I'm probably going to be called racist by people who can't distinguish culture from race so I'll just say (vainly, I suspect) that I do make that distinction." I think he's wrong here, as the multi-cultural set do make a distinction between culture and race, it's just a distinction without a difference. They believe that all culture is inherently good (except Western culture), and must be preserved, and that trying to change someone's culture is an inherent evil. As a Christian, I take the opposite view, namely that all culture is fallen, and thus it is incumbent upon us to reform our culture, never perfecting it but surely improving it. The multiculturalists believe that there is room in the US for all cultures, but I agree with Doc. While I think some aspects of culture can co-exist (I don't think anyone needs to give up their religion to come to the US), some cultural aspects are inherently incompatible with American culture, and anyone who's not willing to give them up shouldn't come here. (For example, Islamist imperialism just doesn't work with religious freedom.)

That said, I'd rather be dealing with our immigrant difficulties than what Europe's dealing with right now. I'm not even sure it's as much of a problem as Doc believes, as I think that these immigrant groups can be assimilated over time. Of course, I also think annexing all of Mexico is doable, if probably unwise.