Self-reliance

Rico says his father sends along this, written by a county emergency manager in Minot, North Dakota:

Weather Bulletin from the Minot Daily News Up here in the northern part of North Dakota we just recovered from a historic event (and one of, dare I say it, Biblical proportions): a blizzard that brought up to 25 feet of snow and winds up to 50 miles an hour, that broke trees in half, knocked down utility poles, stranded hundreds of motorists in lethal snowbanks, closed all roads, isolated scores of communities, and cut power to tens of thousands of people.
However...

Obama did not come.
FEMA did nothing.
No one howled for the government.
No one blamed the government.
No one uttered an expletive on television.
Neither Jesse Jackson nor Al Sharpton came.
Our mayors did not blame Obama, or anyone else.
Our Governor did not blame Obama, or anyone else, either.
CNN, ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC did not visit, or even report on, this storm.
Nobody demanded $2,000 debit cards.
No one asked for a FEMA trailer.
No one looted.
Nobody (I mean nobody) demanded the government do something.
Nobody expected the government to do anything, either.
No Larry King, no Bill O'Reilly, no Oprah, no Chris Mathews, no Geraldo Rivera, no Shaun Penn, no Barbara Streisand, no Brad Pitts, no Hollywood types to be seen.

Nope, we just got on with things.
Melted the snow for water.
Sent out caravans of SUVs to pluck people out of snow-engulfed cars.
Truck drivers pulled people out of snowbanks and didn’t ask for a penny.
Local restaurants made food, and the police and fire departments delivered it to snowbound families.
Families took in the stranded people; total strangers.
We fired up wood stoves and broke out coal oil or Coleman lanterns.
We put on an extra layers of clothes, because up here it is 'Work or Die'.
We did not wait for government to get us out of a mess created by being immobilized by a welfare program that trades votes for 'sitting at home' checks.
Even though a Category Five blizzard is not usual, we know it can happen and how to deal with it ourselves.
I hope this gets passed on. Maybe some people will get the message: the world does not owe you a living.