Now this was an odd thing for an aspiring “Canadian” prime minister to say…
“We are American”: that single sentence was a lesson in political obligation. Black or white, rich or poor, Americans are not supposed to be strangers to one another. Having been abandoned, the people in the convention center were reduced to reminding their fellow citizens, through the medium of television, that they were not refugees in a foreign country. Citizenship ties are not humanitarian, abstract or discretionary. They are not ties of charity. In America, a citizen has a claim of right on the resources of her government when she cannot – simply cannot – help herself.
It may be astonishing that American citizens should have had to remind their fellow Americans of this, but let us not pretend we do not know the reason. They were black, and for all that poor blacks have experienced and endured in this country, they had good reason to be surprised that they were treated not as citizens but as garbage.
Not to mention that the entire premise of the column if BS. No one was left in the Superdome like so much human garbage, black or white, except rhetorically by people who saw an opening the bash Bush.
Under our federal system, it is the Governor of a state who is “in charge” in a case like this, and W’s respect for the constitution, while waiting for her to act, that cost so many lives. It is not up to the POTUS to send troops into a theoretically sovereign state. Louisiana is a state, not a province. Not to mention that every time we give them a few billion bucks to repair their levees, they found a way to spend it building casinos. Louisiana’s government failed, and her governor did not know the fundamental basics of her job besides spreading the spoils around to her political friends.
It is interesting that that is the same conclusion the people who actually lived there drew, so they elected a Republican governor for the first time in a long time.
A bit unfair on this one Kate…that wasn’t a quote from Ignatieff.
“We are American,” a woman at the convention center proclaimed on television.
john g.
Iggy reuses it in his own context only sentences later.
As said above, it was governments failing that led to the situation tobe as bad as it was.
A couple of points: Government policy allowed the outer banks that would have attenuated the storm’s blast in the Gulf to be drastically reduced; An evacuation plan had been developed a year earlier after a eerily similiar simulation exercise but the local council didn’t implement it; a fleet of busses sat idle and empty and was subsequently flooded;
I recall a story about the CEO of WalMart calling his store managers near the imminent landfall area and telling them simply to do the right thing. i.e. just help, bottom line be damned. So in essence, the individual and the private sector were instrumental in accomodating and mitigating human misery in the early hours and not the be-all-end-all governments.
If MI thinks that ‘political imagination’ would have alleviated the problems encountered, he’s delusional. IMO, we’d be no better off north of the 49th if a similar catastrophe struck our coaast. Possibly even worse off because once the US military machine rolled into action, it moved mountains (and lakes). We lack that capability. Of course I’m partisan, but anything that government implements is hopeless.
tim in vermont – yes, was maintaining the levees a Federal responsibility? Was making people get out of their neighborhoods when they knew the places were hours away from going underwater a Federal responsibility? Was it the responsibility of the Federal Government to ensure that the people who (for some reason) remained behind didn’t turn feral within 12 hours?
As for Iggy: I think the man has some principles, but they aren’t robust enought to survive a foray into politics. Me, I have dual Citizenship, and really I just feel North American; for this reason I would never run for P.M. (yeah, sorry guys).
Iggy has no centre.
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Garbage is as garbage does.
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He has used that We are americans, and similar stmts on many videos available on u-tube. Due to the inaction of the mayor of N.O. and the govenor of the state, things went from bad to worse. Remember all those school buses sitting in a lot.
What was it, oh yeh, mayor said it was Sunday and no one would drive them. Think of how neighbors etc worked together in other disasters and hurricanes. What did they do in N.O., sat around and waited for the government to help them.
Tim in Vermont is exactly right on this. His comments are what I thought as soon as I started to read Ignatieff’s article.
… “let us not pretend that we do not know the reason” …
Ignatieff writes as an American in this article. In 2005 I probably wouldn’t hold that against him.
BTW — one of the best early responders to the Katrina disaster was the eeeeevil capitalist, Wal Mart.
“It may be astonishing that American citizens should have had to remind their fellow Americans of this, but let us not pretend we do not know the reason. They were black,…”
Ah yes, another white liberal accusing others of racism; how enlightened of him.
Gotta be quick on this board. Beaten by others on both of my points.
“Claim on resources”, indeed! In America, MY America, the ONLY America, a claim on resources is attained by PAYING for them. Any person who says they have a birthright to resources not owned by one’s family is un-American, uneducated, unprincipled and subversive. They should be shot, not elected.
Voluntary charity from those who pay for resources to others is their own business. Charity ripped from my pocket in the form of excessive taxes is nothing less than a government-assisted robbery.
I’ll grant that he’s made an conscious effort to speak as an observer of the American condition in this piece, but it’s so similar in tone to previous writings in his “American voice” that his attempt fails.
Ouch! What academic socialist swill. Send Iggy home to America please.
Don’t forget, Iffy has played the liberal race card before, in his other country:
From his book, True Patriot Love:
“To imagine it as a citizen is to imagine it as a resident of Yellow Quill reservation in Saskatchewan would have had to imagine it, this Canada where two half-naked children died in a snow-covered field in the sub-Arctic darkness because their father tried to take the sick little girls to his parents and never made it, and all you can hope is that death was as mercilessly quick as the cold can make it. What does a resident of Yellow Quill imagine, what do we Canadians imagine our country to be, the morning we learn that children have perished in this way? It is surely more than just a tragic story of one family. It is a story about us.”
That excerpt reads as if Ignatieff were angling
for a position with the Democrat Party.
Maybe the Canadian Liberal Party was the consolation prize.
Interesting that Iffy throws around a lot of “as Americans, they were entitled to…” Fact of the matter is that the “entitled” screwed up on many levels, waiting for someone to take care of them. contrast Katrina aftermath with Ike (Galveston) and the difference is clear.
cal2: “Iggy reuses it in his own context only sentences later.”
I agree with johng on this one — Iggy’s use of the phrase in this context is a rhetorical device — he is echoing her, not claiming American citizenship for himself. Having said that I am aware that he has done so in other contexts.
PhilM at November 5, 2009 10:44 AM
You failed to mention how Global Climate Change was at fault for all this, so your argument is null and void.
[sarc off]
a contract is a two way street, the state (not feds) failed, but also the people themselves failed themselves, Iffy should get of his racebaiting race horse, and tell the people to be more self relient, opps, that would make him to CONservative:-))))
One of my most lasting memories of Katrina was the reporter who entered a store being looted and there were several black police officers joining in the looting. When he stated shouldn’t you be stopping looting rather that partaking in it, they responded we got to get ours too.
Amazing how the rest of the gulf states affected quietly went about repairing the damage. States like Texas where a lot of the blacks were sent couldn’t wait for them to leave as their crime rates soared. Oh yeah, I forgot it was all Bush’s fault.
No different than Iffy blaming whitey for that sad-sack drunk indian leaving his two babies to freeze to death. Typical liberal.
I wonder how MI MI feels about the ‘entitlements’ his grandparents had to their property and personal security during their flight (to safety, in England!) from the bloody Bolsheviks in Russia, just before that nation drowned in blood and became the USSR? What were taxpaying Russians ‘entitled’ to? Who bailed the Ignatieff family out in their ‘time of troubles’? It was not the ‘spread the wealth’ Bolsheviks, it was a capitalist country Englishwoman. Yep – MIMI owes his existence to England! I hope he bowed to the Prince and his second wife when he met them and thanked their countrymen, through the Prince Charlie and his second wife, for saving his own hide in the not so distant past.
Poor old MIMI, he is still looking for himself…did he check under Unca Mo’s Red carpet, in China?
Is it not curious that the new york times writes stuff that they do and omit that the American citizens, organizations and the rotting American corporations give something like…$300 billion in annual American charitable giving…http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/archives/2009/03/tax_deductions.html…a year to charity.
You may remember that the current occupant of the white house wants to reduce income tax deductions for donations to the charities.
That was one of his campaign policies.
Now, why would this be, your agent suggests that the white house resident wants the people that need a hand, to depend on the largesse of the government as though it had any money that it did not confiscate from productive segment of the population.
Don’t know this for a fact, though there is enough evidence to suggest that clearly projects that when the government gets into charity business, it is those in the bureaucracy of the “government help” that collect the biggest paycheck for themselves, rather than those that use the charity for their benefit.
As a wise man once said, be aware when somebody comes with words, “We’re From the Government, and We’re Here to Help”,
http://republicanmensclub.com/
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/13092
Many times it is difficult to comprehend that news organizations, who you would think are in an information business, don’t seem to know much about anything else than the propaganda value of what they have learned in newspaper school.
It is astonishingly convenient for ALL the left liberal democrats and fans of Nagin to forget that in August, just a few weeks before Katrina, the City of Nawlins published openly in the city’s papers an open and very specific declaration that in the event of a hurricane NO evacuation would be made and NO facilities would be supplied for the support of anyone staying behind : the very precise message was, You’re On Your Own. Do Not Count On the Big Easy. We’re NOT Here For You. I still have the reference somewhere, if anyone’s interested.