COMMENTARY–As we approach the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s devastating march through the Southeast, we will see a great deal of public soul-searching and hand-wringing in the mainstream media.
We’ll hear people asking what happened? Could it happen again? When such so-called "acts of God" occur, don’t we all have a responsibility to pitch in and help?
That’s why a news item this week caught my attention. A report released this week by a group called The Appleseed Foundation found that evacuees who escaped Hurricane Katrina’s flooding on their own are faring better almost a year later than the thousands rescued and dumped in cities saturated with evacuees. The study also found nonprofit and faith-based groups and local and state governments acted more quickly and efficiently than the federal government.
If you think this study sounds like one done by a conservative group to make a point, you’d be wrong. Liberal activist Ralph Nader is one of the driving forces behind the Appleseed Foundation. Of course, Nader is attempting to put his own spin on this. He is saying that the federal government should have done more, and should have done better.
My own opinion is that these data make a case for just the opposite:
the federal government should have done less, and that would have caused them to have done better. We are asking our federal government to do too much, and one of the many consequences of that is that it does most things poorly, including those few things that we really need it to do well — such as border security and national defense.
Another finding of the study is that many of the people who fled the Gulf Coast have not returned. Houston, which initially received an estimated 250,000 evacuees, still has about 150,000 living there, the study found. Atlanta received 100,000 evacuees, and an estimated 80,000 are still there. San Antonio took in 25,000. An estimated 15,000 remain.
What is the point? The point is that – again – the federal government should do less, not more, when it comes to re-building New Orleans.
Why? Because the overwhelming majority of people won’t be back.
The bottom line is that while everyone will have an opinion about what we should do in and for the Gulf Coast, there are a few indisputable facts. Fact #1. More hurricanes will hit the coastlines of our country. Fact #2. If we keep doing the same thing we’ve always done, we’ll keep getting the same tragic results.
I would also suggest that there is yet one more fact. Fact #3. Though we are fond of calling such tragedies "acts of God," the reality is that they are acts of foolish and arrogant men who believe they – we — can build modern-day Towers of Babel that will stand up to the force of God’s will and His world.
We need to act compassionately toward our neighbors who are dislocated by tragedy. But re-building New Orleans may not be the best way to show compassion. Especially when it is looking like billions of those re-construction dollars are going to re-build gambling halls and million-dollar homes that have been knocked down by storms for the second and third time.
Before we do all of that, and continue to blame this and future tragedies on "acts of God," perhaps we also need to exercise a little humility before that same God, and admit that it is not God, but arrogant and foolish men who might be at least partially responsible for the suffering.
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Warren Smith is the publisher of "The Charlotte World" and the Evangelical Press News Service. He can be reached at warren.smith@thecharlotteworld.com