Back From Hurricane Land

I’ve spent the last few days in hurricane-ravished Southeast Texas. I visited family and friends in the Beaumont area to help out. I ended up helping my Dad and Granny out with fallen trees and limbs, which is always fun (okay...not really). I also visited a friend whose house was hit by storm surge. Right outside of Bridge City everything looked fine, but once you got in every yard you looked at had a large pile of sheet-rock, insulation, furniture and various belongings in the front yard. My friend’s house had water in it at least four foot high. With the exception of the top four inches, his truck was completely submerged. What a mess.

Two things, completely polar-opposite of each other, struck me during my visit. The first was the resilience of the people whose homes had been destroyed. They obviously weren’t happy about it, but the few I actually talked to didn’t seem too down.

On the other hand, I heard a number of negative things about the work that FEMA was doing. My guess is that FEMA is probably trying but they are limited by the fact that a very large area has just been wiped out. But I really don’t want to defend FEMA because I don’t know enough to say "yay" or "nay" on the job they’re doing. I just want to say this, that all the talk about FEMA tells me one thing very clearly: people depend too much on the government. It should be obvious by now that the government is not good at much of anything except blowing up stuff. That they have proven they are quite adept at. How long will people depend on the government to protect them from natural disaster? For their education? Shall they depend on them for their health care and their financial well-being? Nothing I have seen gives me any confidence that they will do a good job at any of these things, so why do people put up with parties that are clearly okay with large, sprawling, behemoth governments? We are in a sad state.