BEWARE THE LESSONS OF KATRINA

Everyone, it seems, is looking for the lessons of Katrina. Tom Friedman says the debacle in New Orleans represents a loss of American discipline.

There is something troublingly self-indulgent and slothful about America today - something that Katrina highlighted and that people who live in countries where the laws of gravity still apply really noticed. It has rattled them - like watching a parent melt down.

That is certainly the sense I got after observing the Katrina debacle from half a world away here in Singapore - a city-state that, if it believes in anything, believes in good governance. It may roll up the sidewalks pretty early here, and it may even fine you if you spit out your gum, but if you had to choose anywhere in Asia you would want to be caught in a typhoon, it would be Singapore. Trust me, the head of Civil Defense here is not simply someone's college roommate.

Pat Buchanan says something similar, although while Friedman attributes the blame to government-cutting Conservatives, Buchanan says it is "Great Society" Liberals who are to blame.

At the Superdome and New Orleans Convention Center, we saw the failure of 40 years of the Great Society. No sooner had Katrina passed by and the 17th Street levee broke than hundreds of young men who should have taken charge in helping the aged, the sick and the women with babies to safety took to the streets to shoot, loot and rape. The New Orleans police, their numbers cut by deserters who left their posts to look after their families, engaged in running gun battles all day long to stay alive and protect people...

The real disaster of Katrina was that society broke down. An entire community could not cope. Liberalism, the idea that good intentions and government programs can build a Great Society, was exposed as fraud. After trillions of tax dollars for welfare, food stamps, public housing, job training and education have poured out since 1965, poverty remains pandemic. But today, when the police vanish, the community disappears and men take to the streets to prey on women and the weak.

Stranded for days in a pool of fetid water, almost everyone waited for the government to come save them. They screamed into the cameras for help, and the reporters screamed into the cameras for help, and the "civil rights leaders" screamed into the cameras that Bush was responsible and Bush was a racist.

Americans were once famous for taking the initiative, for having young leaders rise up to take command in a crisis. See any of that at the Superdome? Sri Lankans and Indonesians, far poorer than we, did not behave like this in a tsunami that took 400 times as many lives as Katrina has thus far.

Read both columns. I think you will agree that both make good points. Government failed, and people failed. The problem with both men is that they extrapolate what happened in New Orleans to the rest of America. The fact of the matter is this...

NEW ORLEANS IS NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF AMERICA!!!

Culturally, New Orleans is a city that represents a very different historical tradition than most of the rest of the country. It is a city with deep roots in French, Spanish, antebellum Southern and African/Caribbean cultures. It is a city infused by a history of pursuing pleasure in the face of Death (one official called it a 'party town', which it surely is). Faced every day with the prospect of being drowned by floodwaters or killed by disease (the common calamities throughout the history of the city), the people of New Orleans have developed a unique attitude about work, civic duty, public service, and the pursuit of pleasure.

If you are skeptical of this analysis, then ask yourself a question. Why did New Yorkers on 9/11 calmly walk home, many covered in dust and blood? Why was there so little looting or criminal disorder? Because New York is a working town. The whole culture of the city is dominated by the attitude that the business of the city is business. Add to that the idea (held by almost all New Yorkers, regardless of their cultural origins) that they are tougher than average people, you get the unified response we saw on 9/11. New Yorkers collectively spit in the eye of their attackers. You think you're going to scare us? Fuhhggetaboutit. You think you're going to get us to run around like chickens with their heads cut off? Fuhhggetaboutit.

This is not to say that there weren't many people in New Orleans who reacted calmly, and bravely to extraordinary circumstances. Certainly, though, I cannot imagine even one member of the NYPD deserting his post in the face of disaster, much less the hundreds that deserted the Crescent City's police force, can you?

The bottom line? Beware of drawing conclusions about America because of how the people and civic leaders of one city reacted to a catastrophe. Beware of drawing conclusions about the state of our Federal Government by examining the reactions of one agency, FEMA, led by a man who was clearly out of his league.