Smash through that meme!

Please read Richard Rieben on Strike the Root ("Katrina Cuts to the Core"), even if the writing style is appropriately arid and dry.

"In other words, much of the reaction is to the failure of the government to perform effectively prior to, during and after the disaster, instead of cutting through this to the essential ineffectiveness of government period, and to the destructiveness of usurping the authority of the individual to any degree or in any situation."

"Government is a cancer. What do you put in its place after you cut out a cancer? Nothing, folks. Nothing."

Strong words for strong feelings for the rights and the happiness of the individual.

Exactly a week earlier, Lew Rockwell had largely taken the same line in his article The State and the Flood, which you should read also (and it would not be too difficult to quote several other similarly good columns among the mass of more erroneous and futile ones), even if that smiling god of the libertarian establishment and a believer in God, though not in Government, has like the latter not too much regard for even more fundamental and radical and highly valuable ideas not developed by the saints in his own Bethlehem stable. While I am plugging his essays now and then, he never plugged, he stubbornly and silently ignores comparable quality on my site, doesn't even answer email or submissions (about a dozen by Richard Rieben that were then published elsewhere, on an as great and famous site). Individuals can sometimes be such a threat to the market and a nuisance, if one places the market, not above everything else, but considers it the only thing having a right to existence.

To quote philosopher Rieben: "Sovereignty is the base; reciprocity defines how to make it work." If only governments and gods had a different concept of reciprocity...

Be it as it may, on the subject of

Hurricane Katrina

• Katrina: Worst Hyperbole Ever? by Jonathan David Morris
  http://www.butterbach.net/jdm/jdm88.htm
  The views on this one went the full spectrum from crap to pure, unadulterated genius. Judge for yourself!
     
• Iraq, Katrina, and Industrial Hemp: A Discussion That Needs To Be Had
  http://www.butterbach.net/mainfare/jdm-iraqkatrina.htm
  The above by the same author is daring too and pinpoints aspects often cowardly neglected. It's in my "Main Fare ~" rubric on my home page I warmly recommend, for what it offers so far and for what will come soon.

In connection with the above second article, I would like to draw your kind attention to Justin Raimondo's Katrina, Iraq, and the Know-It-All Syndrome. He is in a side-barn of Bethlehem , but has at least once put a link in one of his columns to my site. Though it had to do with one of the so many tragic events in Iraq, it was to the picture of a cute Iraqi man. What will Hoppe think?

From Lew Rockwell's article above I would like to quote the following: "What was missing that made the looting rampage possible was the bourgeoisie, that had either left by choice or had been kicked out. It is they who keep the peace." So, don't miss this article from the more luxurious than a barn wider Mises Institute! Even if in some ways it seems to be a gated community...

If personally so far I have kept silent on Katrina (if I except the following two sentences in a blog entry of August 30: "Hurricane Katrina fortunately did not do any harm to our bastion Attorney Rex Curry in Tampa, Florida, nor to the server of this site in Boca Raton, Florida. My sympathy though goes to those who were severely hit by that killer."), it is due to shock, to helplessness, to anger and amazement and to the too many things that could or maybe need to be said. Out of respect for the victims I preferred to restrain myself for the time being and remain relatively speechless, like with 9/11. And this is a much much bigger catastrophe and tragedy! Even if the winds started blowing from outside the borders of the uSA, the real catastrophe entirely originates from within the borders, no foreigners involved, unlike with 9/11, when the foreigners were a sort of personnes interposées, third persons fraudulently replacing more than one of the interested parties. Looking closer, we are again inside the borders, only more indirectly...

In a private correspondence, not meant for publication, I had recently uttered the following: "It is not that each victim of 9/11 or Katrina has to be represented by one word. On Katrina one could write volumes and almost volumes have been written already, but one should boil it down to three or four basic sentences cut in marble. Out of respect for those poorest victims. In my view what happened is a total final indictment of that shabby nation the United States have become. Nobody seems to notice. It's good that so many simple folks are nice and helpful people and do now what need to be done. Low brow practical help, that is what is needed. No talk. Silent mourning. Prayers don't help. They didn't. After the worst shock will be over, action is required. During the next local, state and federal elections. And some kind of revolution, chasing politic(ian)s into the desert, where there is no water. They could always take the polluted one with them or a few corpses for food, the only one they deserve. So that the American people may regain their dignity. It took four days before authorities STARTED to give some weak help. Such a thing never would have happened here in most European countries, even from our bastards of politicians. If the average American citizen does not grasp, without the help from libertarians, what kind of bastards those politicians like Bush and Condi are, I am sorry, they are bastards themselves. And I am thinking also of my American relatives over there."

These are clear words. As you know, here on this site you are not with the lackey media in the case of tragedies. Remain well-disposed to it and let's start going steady. Since Justin and a few others are visiting my site too.