I get nervous when we agree(Ha Ha).

LOL, I had the same thought, doma. But on this issue you and I really are in agreement. It’s one reason that I hate the polarity of modern political discussions. We have one party buying votes because they never met a social welfare program that they didn’t like, and the other party buying votes of the wealthy because they never met a tax cut they didn’t like. Very little room for actually examining which programs make sense and which ones should be cut when you frame the debate that way.

I get nervous when we agree(Ha Ha).
I hope you understand that by recognizing the lack of individual responsibility by some, I am not advocating punishing them by abandoning them.
I put my hopes on intervtions that help them attain self-sufficincy and prevent spreading bad behaviour from generation to generation.
Programs for children are particularly important as are programs encouraging continuing education, etc.

That’s why I think we have to get serious about identifying what works and what doesn’t.

Good comment by domajot above though on areas where the issue of individual responsibility really does apply. Newt’s wrong to discuss it in the context of poor people who don’t own cars being told to go to the Superdome as the “shelter of last resort”, with no plan in place for providing them food, water, or security- or a way out in the event of serious flooding.

Individuals do have some responsibility but I really don’t agree with anyone who tries to put it at that level. The city had inadequate evacuation plans. They had worked through major problems with the auto evacuation and (fortunately!) finally had gotten that right to enable those with transportation to get out in time. But they never planned for the tens of thousands who didn’t have cars, and that is shameful.

The crassness of Newt’s words obscures a deeper problem, that should be discussed seriosly, but isn’t. There are, ubdeed, people who have totally forsaken a sense of personal responsibility.
Some unwed girls who have one baby after another expect to have their famailies cared for by an anonymous government without thinking twice of who actually provides the funds for the government’s largesse.

We should address the dependent state of mind, but we should address it rationally. Every time there is talk of budget cuts, social programs go to the top of the list. Instead of examining which programs work and which don’t, programs are cut en masse. Many of these are designed precisely to intervene in the cycle of dependency.
With horror, I read about a proposal to no longer subsicize welfare mothers enrolled in school. That will show them! Bur show them what – that it’s no use trying?

On the other side, the defenders of the downtrodden defend them with equal across-the-board short sightedness. Where is the analysis of which programs work as is, which should be fine tuned and which should be dropped? There are some reports, to be sure, but considering the importance and the cost, these efforts are anemic.

Whether its private schools vs public, government employees vs contrating, business interests vs workers – it’s all based on theories and immediate self interest, with no one looking back to see how things actually work.

Gingrich is just a symptom of a much larger problem abroad.

Of course saying something like that is moronic — but the mainstream left doesn’t say that. That sort of garbage is part-and-parcel of painstream right conversation, though.

The floodwaters, however, didn’t.

So I suppose you’re right, it was sheer ignorance for the citizens of the lower 9th to trust that the Army Corp of Engineers had actually constructed the levees properly.

And I also suppose that if they were better educated they’d have better jobs and so could afford their own cars to leave the area rather than being forced to rely on the public transprotation that never showed.

Your right, it’s high time these folks took some personal responsibility.

In New Orleans, yes, being a good citizen porbably requires you know how to get yourself out of the way of a hurricane. To believe that you don’t NEED to look after yourself because the City, State or Federal government will do it for you is to wildly misunderstand the real realtionship between the citizen and the government.

An notice, none of this lets the City, State or Federal governments off the hook for their mistakes…it in fact opens up a whole other way in which they systematically failed.