Not too little federal money, but too much

My embedded reporter in New Orleans forwarded me a Fox News column that makes some very cogent, if politically incorrect, points, including this one:

"What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider 'normal' behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. And they don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men...
"People living in piles of their own trash, while petulantly complaining that other people aren't doing enough to take care of them and then shooting at those who come to rescue them. This is not just a description of the chaos at the Superdome. It is a perfect summary of the forty-year history of the welfare state and its public housing projects."

Ouch. And there's worse in the rest of the column. Read it if you're not easily offended by the truth...