Battle of New Orleans

As seen on Wimp.com

After several emails expressing concern over the video parody, Battle of New Orleans, let’s agree that there is a valid cause for concern. Glad you saw it! Hopefully, many people will have a reaction. What was most interesting and predictable in hindsight were the distinct differences in the responses of liberals and conservatives.

Having had nothing to do with producing it, we can't take credit for it. We suspect a conservative would claim it was a parody with a lot of underlying truth. We suspect a liberal would be offended by the video and portray it as racial. The difference in the viewpoint stems largely from perspective. A conservative sees a group of Americans in New Orleans being victimized, generation after generation, and watching both the victims and the victim’s keepers pathetically defend the mistreatment. A liberal sees only that the victims are predominantly descendants of the same race and instead of doing anything about it, which is typical of most liberals, projects blame on the current administration for political gain, generation after generation. It is not conservatives who have perpetuated the deplorable conditions in New Orleans.

It seems that liberals must feel a desperate political need to perpetuate the subservient inequality of New Orleans residents by continuing to inflict the existing social conditions (uneducated, unqualified, unproductive, and undisciplined) that produced these people of marginal citizenship in the first place. Otherwise, why would Democrats continue if it were not intentional? Is torture too strong a word? How about inhumane? Democrats have ruled Louisiana politics since before dirt. If Democrats had wanted anything to change in Louisiana, had wanted to improve the lot of these unfortunate and ill-motivated individuals of all skin tones and ethnic cultures, conditions would have changed eons ago. If not intentional, then are we to assume unfeeling and clueless?

That begs the next question, “Do liberals have any faith that these Americans who were portrayed by the media so negatively during Hurricane Katrina can become self-reliant, productive, and educated Americans?” Or do liberals hold their constituency, and particularly the residents of New Orleans, in the same disregard as they hold Iraqi citizens, arguing that neither culture has any concept of democracy and social freedom?

Unless the system of "black box socialism" changes, it is unlikely there will be any changes in Louisiana, and people of all races in New Orleans will have fewer opportunities than otherwise would be possible. Unfortunately, those in Orleans Parish are disproportionately Americans of African heritage (but not all by any stretch). As a direct result of Hurricane Katrina, thousands of residents had the opportunity to relocate to other parts of the country which in turn should have opened up opportunities that before would have been considered impossible. How many refugees will allow themselves to be assimilated into their new communities and become productive citizens, and how many will try to remain wards of the state? The jury remains out.

Human nature is so predictable. People don't like it when their cherished beliefs are challenged. Challenging a liberal’s beliefs quickly brings accusations of ‘hate speech.’

Many conservatives are not fond of the Bush Administration, and that’s putting it mildly. The values of many Americans are far more conservative than those of the current Administration. In fact, many Americans find very little the Bush Administration has done, outside the defense of the United States against terrorism, with which they agree. Most Americans are beside themselves with concern over illegal migration across the nation’s borders and the threat to America it portends for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is terrorism.

Most Republicans and all conservatives similarly disapprove of the Clinton exploits, both in Arkansas, and while in the Presidency. There are mountains of facts that now document the Clinton legacy which have been assembled by authors of all stripes. History will show that both Presidents Clinton and Bush were less than desirable in some respects, but from different view points and for different reasons. Both made no effort to control illegal immigration. Fortunately, elections are just around the corner. Two liberal administrations in a row, regardless of political party affiliation, is hopefully enough.

The issue in the video is that New Orleans truly is the closest thing to a cesspool of humanity in the United States and almost everything in the video parody has a basis in fact, regardless of what anyone does or does not want to believe. Few have had the good fortune to live in New Orleans for a brief period of time, mine being five years from 1967 to 1971, much of it in Jefferson and Orleans Parishes. Less widely known is that your author piloted rescue helicopters in the days and nights of Hurricane Camille on August 17-18, 1969 and performed countless hours of community service in the greater New Orleans area when not enjoying a wonderful bachelor life among the good citizens of Louisiana.

Most casual conversations and main stream media presentations about Katrina and New Orleans have been so devoid of truth that several articles were authored and published on redstatepatriot.com addressing what really happened in New Orleans before, during and after Hurricane Katrina. Those articles are archived at the Red State Patriot website under the title: “The Katrina Chronicles.” They are filled with enough facts to choke the average person. They may be difficult to read for those predisposed to preconceptions regardless of facts.

We all have a few acquaintances that choose to go through an entire lifetime believing what they want to believe rather than acknowledge reality. For instance, many have already demonstrated their hate of George W. Bush, but have no facts what-so-ever that they can articulate to justify their deeply felt emotion.

If life were perfect, none of us would worry about feelings, because facts should speak for themselves. The one exception is those who don’t want to listen to facts, which appears to be the basis of much of the claimed effrontery in American society today. If you hold a viewpoint which is grounded in fact, a reasonable person will often learn from your scholarship and adapt to reality if not your viewpoint - but not if facts are meaningless to that person and there exists an ulterior agenda such as supporting an untenable belief system. Similarly, if your viewpoint is grounded only in emotion and opinion, then we know where that conversation is going to go. As a result, liberals have few choices but to claim to be offended by beliefs different than those they cherish.

This is a long way of saying the video parody is tragically accurate. Rather than attack the video, as any emotional person has every right to do, the better choice, it seems is to identify the problems that have afflicted these Americans in New Orleans, destroying generation after generation, and then make it a national priority to set them free - to set millions of people free. On this point surely we can agree. Few would argue that many Americans of African heritage, some but not all of whom are inner city residents, are less economically free today than their ancestors were when they were emancipated 230+ years ago.

However, it is also true that few would like our solutions, which is why we should never elect your less-than-humble conservative author as the President of the United States. The social changes would be swift, the borders would be secure and your expression would be one of "shock and awe."

Let's begin, however, once and for all time, to judge people by the content of their character rather than by the color of their skin. We all should live our lives by that admonition. Those who fairly demand the respect for an individual’s character should recognize and undertake a commensurate commitment to personal responsibility. Only when the individual fails his own commitment to personal responsibility is the hope for good character lost. Without personal responsibility there can be no character. And there you have New Orleans in a nutshell – socially and politically.

We have refused to recognize problems in New Orleans for decades, and should have dealt with those social problems a long time ago. Instead, liberals assert that the person who points out an obvious reality, or the child who innocently claims the king has no clothes, is somehow a racist. Who is the racist – not the conservative who wants to solve the problems of under-employment, under-character, under-education, under-achievement and under-citizenship? Who is the racist – not the conservative who wants to free these people so that each can be all that he can be? Is the racist not the one who claims there are no problems; there have never been any problems; it’s all the federal government's fault; just send us more money; and let us just perpetuate the existing conditions of economic and political dependency?

We are proud of you who sent emails. You felt the cultural pain as we did, maybe not exactly the same, but you felt it when confronted with the racial and political reality. While reality and facts produced many emotions, the liberal reaction was, “I don’t want to hear about it, and you’re a racist for telling me the truth.” We didn't like how it made us feel either, but for far different reasons, knowing that so much could have been done for so long to help these people and people just like them in most metropolitan areas. If there was such a thing as a misery index, it would be pretty high in New Orleans. More importantly, it should anger all Americans that it continues and is openly sanctioned by liberal Louisiana politicians. Never loose sight of the fact that New Orleans was created by the state and local governments to be what it is. It wasn't an accident.

Red State Patriot

Posted January 28, 2006 12:10 PM
Read more on Katrina and Rita ~ Welfare and the Entitlement Culture