Leaving The Poor Behind

CRITICS OF the president are shocked that in the evacuation of New Orleans before hurricane Katrina the poor were left behind. Said Senator Kennedy: “those people who had cars and money got out, and those people who were impoverished died.”

Well, Senator, and whose fault is that?

The ground theme of the conservative movement of the last half-century is that if you encourage helplessness, and sustain helpless people in their helplessness with programs and pensions, as the welfare state does, then you will increase the number of people who are “impoverished.”

New Orleans, according to Brendan Miniter, is a poster child for the welfare state.

The welfare state failed the residents of the Lower Ninth Ward and other flooded New Orleans neighborhoods long before the levees gave way. This gets us back to the question Sen. Kennedy wants Judge Roberts to answer about whether to adopt a narrow view that prevents real progress from taking place. And it also explains the role Mayor Ray Nagin and Gov. Kathleen Blanco--both Democrats--played in leaving mostly poor, minority citizens in a city that was clearly descending into chaos.

So let us ask another question. How could, how in the name of the poor that have voted for Democrats ever since the dawn of time, how could Democratic politicians like Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco have left the poor to perish in New Orleans?

We know the answer to that. The fact is that the Democrats instinctively like the poor to be concentrated in the inner cities and helpless. If they were prosperous and self-reliant, they would move out and start voting for Republicans, and we can’t have that.

So how are we going to help the people left behind next time? Writes Miniter:

Are we going to try another big-government program and expect better results this time? Or are we now going to realize that ownership is the most likely path to the middle class? School vouchers can help poor parents take ownership of their children’s education and finally break the grip teachers unions have on the public schools. Health savings accounts and private accounts for Medicaid and Social Security will give those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder the skills as well as the assets necessary to climb higher. In late August the levees broke in New Orleans. But the welfare state had left the poor stuck in the mud long before that.

Amen to that.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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