Is New Orleans like unto another Sodom?

A reader writes:

Consider the looting, consider the fact that city officials were warned about ineffective dikes for years, even consider that decadent New Orleans symbolized to some a modern Sodom and Gomorrah. Then consider that this is a microcosm of America, ignoring dire, urgent warnings, like the immigration crisis, resorting to meaningless actions and empty rhetoric to provide feel-good solace to the affected. The looting by mostly minorities in this time of crisis rather than the unity and lawfulness seen in the blackout in 1965 is very telling of where we are as a nation. Even mentioning that blacks are doing the looting or that that the city is largely minority, hence explaining many of its social problems, is taboo.

Listen to the mayor of the destroyed city whine that “the people of Louisiana are too good, too strong, to be affected by this criminal element.” If what he said is true, why are armies of looters marauding the streets as we speak? He could not even say, “Looters will be shot or arrested.” A police department so corrupt and criminal that the feds had to intervene to dismantle it some time ago, or Mardi Gras with drunken girls flashing their breasts for beads, does not do much for a city’ reputation. So I guess the good silent majority of people must have fled before the storm arrived.

And that’s how I see it, I do feel awful for the good people, the sick, children and elderly. But what is happening there is a sign of worse to come, either by natural disaster, or oil embargo, or terrorism, or maybe by the sheer rot of the civilization we are becoming.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 01, 2005 06:44 AM | Send