Seven Events That Made America America

by Larry Schweikart

  Both the federal government and, to an extent, the state government succeeded at some of those things governments do well: they issued warnings and assembled troops. The Coast Guard performed brilliantly, leading Sheriff Jack Stephens of St. Bernard Parish, when asked how he would improve FEMA, to answer, “I would abolish it. I’d blow up FEMA and ask the Coast Guard what it needs.”85 Government failure manifested itself in the civilian leadership of Blanco and Nagin, and in the sense that government asked military forces to step outside their primary role of war-fighting in order to provide charity. It was also incorrect to say, as did Marsha Evans of the Red Cross, that “Louisiana had a plan. It’s New Orleans and FEMA that really didn’t have much of one.”86 (The Red Cross, it should be noted, had something of a black eye after 9/11, when millions of dollars donated specifically for New York City and Washington, D.C., for relief and rescue efforts related to the terrorist bombings were instead set aside for other future disasters by the aid agency.)87 FEMA was required to work through states, and did have a plan—which was ignored—while the state of Louisiana had authority and the obligation to evacuate New Orleans over Nagin’s own incompetent intransigence. That made Blanco equally culpable.

  But there is no question that the federal government heaped more incompetence upon previously astounding incompetence. Even the Army Corps of Engineers, involved in a road-building operation to try to buttress the levees, slowed down the actual road work with “long waits between dumps, because dozens and dozens and dozens of trucks . . . were traveling in convoy to their distant supply source.”88 A local supply depot that had been established was much closer, but was ignored. Finally, by Saturday night, the Corps of Engineers went back to the original system. Criticisms of the Corps of Engineers, while valid in regards to its failure to maintain the levees, must be viewed in light of similar praise for the Corps, which had constructed the almost invincible Mississippi River spillway systems, which had not flooded seriously since 1927. Rather, a narrow task given to the Corps had become politicized as each local group sought to use the levee funds from the federal government for its own projects, and the result was predictable. And while FEMA was a useful punching bag, the evidence is incontrovertible that FEMA was disorganized, unprepared, and grossly late in arriving. It is also true that FEMA had done a good job after 9/11, and that the “enormity of the challenge . . . with Hurricane Katrina . . . was an immensely more complex job” than in New York and Washington, but that event came as a complete surprise, while Katrina’s track was known for days.

  Of course, the sensationalist press didn’t help either. In part, reporting on a twenty-four-hour basis (something the residents of Johnstown, Dayton, San Francisco, and Galveston did not have to worry about) dampened relief efforts. The reports were so commonplace in the hours after the levees broke that it brought a halt to rescue operations already under way. This led Tucker Carlson on Fox News to say, “If this had been Palm Beach, the 82nd Airborne would have been there Monday afternoon,” but upon hearing that remark, even one anti-Bush writer acknowledged that “most Americans immediately thought, ‘If this had been Palm Beach, there would have been no need for the 82nd Airborne because there would not have been any looters.’”89 And although there was an element of covering one’s rear in the government’s own report on Katrina, nevertheless there was also some truth to the claim that “If anyone rioted, it was the media.”90 USA Today called the Superdome the “epicenter of human misery,” and wild reports of up to one hundred deaths circulated, but in fact only six died (four of natural causes, one overdose, and one suicide): there were no murders inside the dome.91 There were implications and speculations by otherwise reliable historian Douglas Brinkley that multiple rapes occurred inside the dome, but little real evidence of that exists. Similar media reports spread through Baton Rouge of rampant gunfire, fistfights, and auto theft—all false. But some gross and reprehensible behavior was documented, and could not be explained away. Looters not only stole with abandon, but broke into world-famous restaurants and defecated on tables and cooking surfaces. One Shell mini-market operator returned to find his store robbed blind, with feces deposited throughout his refrigerators: “They behaved like animals,” he said of the vandals.

  Michael Brown arrived in Baton Rouge on Monday morning and was briefed extensively. Brown himself would come in for massive criticism later. He had a spotty résumé with big question marks (as do almost all political appointees), knew little about disaster relief, but had performed well during the 2004 hurricanes in Florida. Democrats whined that federal money had also gone to counties that were not severely damaged—again, a common occurrence for money drifting out of Washington. The picture Brown got in Baton Rouge, however, was false, indicating the worst was over just as the levees had started to break. Poor communications from both local people and the FEMA contacts inside New Orleans had failed to deliver this news on a timely basis to Baton Rouge. And while Brown would tout his success in Florida, the hurricanes there came and went, and the state was well prepared. In the Gulf Coast, not only would New Orleans be under water, but virtually every state in the region would be smashed. Worse still, the difficulties of Washington bureaucrats showing up at a disaster site were magnified by their lack of knowledge of the local terrain. FEMA workers didn’t know local wards, place names, or even the course of the Mississippi River. Consequently, they routinely over- or underestimated the time it took to deliver materials.

  Somewhere in history, Americans got the foolish notion that just because they wanted to live in a warm climate by the ocean, their fellow citizens and neighbors should subsidize their risk when storms hit. This was as true for California, with its perpetual wildfires, earthquakes, and mudslides, as it was for the hurricane-riddled Gulf Coast. Philip Hearn, who has written about Hurricane Camille, observed in 2005, “New U.S. census figures show that nearly 90,000 people, pursuing warm climate, job opportunities, and southern hospitality, moved into Mississippi’s three coastal communities” in the late 1990s, a migration made possible in part by the federal government’s program of offering insurance for those living in high-risk coastal areas.92

  A more disconcerting trend had also become evident, not just in New Orleans, but in many of America’s cities, where for generations Democrats have ruled the structure of city government. The increasing levels of welfare, debt, and deterioration of schools have been accompanied by cries for still more aid, more welfare, and more spending on schools. New Orleans thus had a higher proportion of poor (almost 28 percent below the poverty line) than similar-sized cities such as Portland (13 percent) or Tucson (18 percent), but well below that of some large Democrat-dominated cities such as Detroit (almost 48 percent) or Los Angeles (40 percent), making the Crescent City merely one of the worst examples of a Democratic fiefdom, but hardly unique. The long-term effect was to create a population often entirely dependent on the city government for almost every element of daily life, from transportation to education to welfare. Ruggedly individualistic responses to a disaster, such as those in Johnstown and Dayton, became rarities. Instead, people merely started to wonder, “Who will help me?”

  The fact that there were far fewer able-bodied young males available to help in New Orleans who were not criminals (another legacy of Democratic policies of crushing taxes, union favoritism, and deteriorating publicly funded school systems over the years) exacerbated the dependency mentality. With a New Orleans arrest rate of almost 25 percent of the population (or, more chillingly, nearly 50 percent of the male population), one was as likely to be mugged as to receive help from the typical New Orleans citizen during an emergency.93 (The city was the nation’s second leading murder capital in 2004.) In both Dayton and Johnstown, some sporadic looting occurred (mostly after rescuers arrived, bringing with them some opportunity-seekers), but both areas handled their own security until National Guard troops took over. As noted, in the case of the Dayton flood, NCR’s own private security patrolled flooded streets. While a large numbe
r of New Orleans police simply vanished—some looking after their own families in contravention of their oaths, others simply running—as in Dayton and Johnstown, individuals such as the men guarding the Mardi Gras floats under the supervision of seventy-nine-year-old Blaine Kern fired at looters and chased them away. “If you come on my property,” Kern said, “you’re going to get shot.”94

  As in Dayton and Johnstown, a successful response came not from government at any level, but from individuals and businesses. Wal-Mart opened its stores to emergency workers, who were allowed to simply take supplies; gave cash to employees who had to relocate; and, as the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review concluded, “stepped over or around the confused, floundering and sluggish bodies of federal, state and local government relief agencies and sprang into action.”95 The company also gave $15 million to the Red Cross or other aid funds, and the Walton Family Foundation kicked in $8 million. Individually, companies such as American Airlines and Coca-Cola set aside significant sums to help their employees, and Coke used its own trucks to distribute materials. Skip O’Connor, the sixty-two-year-old owner of six hotels in the New Orleans area, left the Marriott Courtyard on St. Charles Avenue open as a shelter. After the evacuation, one dweller left a note saying, “I’m writing to say thanks. . . . We did not destroy anything, but did find food to eat and water. . . . I will send something back finance-wise to compensate the use of your facilities.”96 American Airlines also flew out one thousand evacuees after landing planeloads of emergency supplies. A specific musicians’ relief agency was set up to replace local musicians’ instruments. Individual acts of heroism, such as that of Steve Snyder, who was floating by a nursing home in his boat when he heard screaming, and pulled out a trapped resident incapable of walking, were common. The so-called “Cajun Navy” of volunteers took it upon themselves to drive to New Orleans, organize the launches and rescues, and plunge into the infamous “toxic soup.” Another group, bar patrons known as the NOLA Homeboys, used makeshift rafts, canoes, and anything else that floated to stage rescues.

  While Blanco, Nagin, and FEMA all seemed utterly incapable of organizing publicly owned buses to get the Superdome refugees out, one of Blanco’s state employees contacted the private Travel Industry Association, which immediately began rerouting sightseeing buses to the rescue.97 Blanco had the authority to force local parishes to yield their (unused) buses, and there were eighty such vehicles in the Baton Rouge Capital Area Transit System that sat idle the entire time.

  Katrina does not teach us that government aid can’t help with disaster relief in some ways, or that proper military and police functions of government aren’t useful (although in New Orleans, Homeland Security repeatedly held up relief and evacuation by civilians out of concern for their safety, delaying the rescues still further). Rather, the lesson in all these cases is that government will always lag behind the efforts of private individuals, and the more towns and communities know they need to rely on themselves, and not Washington, the more rapid and compassionate the response will be. And what is the constitutional role for the federal government in such natural disasters? The Founders did not mention one. Did they not ever experience hurricanes, storms, blizzards, and a host of other natural calamities? Of course. The stories of Caribbean storms were oft-told: Alexander Hamilton wrote his famous 1772 “hurricane letter” in which he said he saw “scenes of horror exhibited around us [which] naturally awakened such ideas [about death] in every thinking breast.” At no time did he contemplate any government assistance to any of the victims, even though he wept at the sight of mothers with infants (“Her poverty denies relief . . . her heart is bursting, the tears gush down her cheeks”). Yet he did not appeal to government but to “ye, who revel in affluence, [to] see the afflictions of humanity and bestow your superfluity to ease them.”98

  As was clear after the practice of declaring national emergencies became common, virtually any and all hardships could fit the definition. But only recently have presidents willingly and eagerly declared “disaster areas” or used emergency powers. When, in 1887, Congress tried to push through a “compassionate” Seed Corn Bill, which would have given Texas farmers—the victims of a drought—a small amount of money for new seed, President Grover Cleveland vetoed it, writing in his message: I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution; and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit.99

  To “indulge a benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds” was wrong, as Cleveland wrote when he vetoed the bill. He ended his veto message with an astounding admonition for modern politicians to consider: “A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this [the government’s] power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should constantly be enforced that, though the people support the Government, the Government should not support the people [emphasis in original].”100 Insisting that “the friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied on to relieve their fellow citizens in misfortune,” he called on members of Congress to personally donate to the suffering farmers by using seed regularly given to members for distribution to their constituents (at ten times the Texas Seed Corn Bill’s cost), or send money to the farmers.101

  Cleveland only echoed a long line of Founders who had believed in such a principle. In the Federalist No. 44, James Madison wrote, “No axiom is more clearly established in law or in reason than that wherever the end is required, the means are authorized.”102 Much mischief has been undertaken through the so-called “elastic clause” of the Constitution, Article I, Section 8, clause 18, which says, “The Congress shall have Power to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.” When Alexander Hamilton, as secretary of the treasury, sought to use the clause to establish a national bank and subsidize manufacturers, Madison responded, “If not only the means, but the objects are unlimited, the parchment had better be thrown into the fire at once.”103 Hamilton increasingly sought to make the “general welfare” clause a tool for Congress to take under its management anything it should deem “for the public welfare.”

  Katrina and Johnstown were opposite examples of how natural disasters have been handled. Johnstown’s flood was a pivotal event in our history because it was the clearest (but not the only) demonstration of private charity combating the effects of natural disasters. The Founders knew that government did have a role to play in natural disasters, namely, keeping order. That was a military function.104 But relief and disaster response by the federal government would always come up short compared to the compassionate efforts of communities and neighbors.

  4.

  IKE HAS A HEART ATTACK, TRIGGERING DIETARY NANNYISM

  Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now.

  THOMAS JEFFERSON

  In a chapter dealing with food, it’s appropriate to start with a recipe: begin with two parts unsettled science; add three parts anticapitalism; stir in four parts big-government nannyism and vegan extremism; then sprinkle generously with overpopulation hysteria and top with a healthy dollop of global warming. Your dish? A disastrous war on meat whose initial objective—to reduce the rate of heart disease among the population—led to the politicization of the American diet in the name of public health, while providing cover for every crackpot food fearmonger and free-marketophobe in the United States. The heartburn you feel after ingesting this dish is just the first sign of something much harder to swallow: the idea that pseudoscientists can dictate, via the government food police, what you are supposed to eat. This malignant yeast of junk science has subsequently laid waste to entire industries, diverted AIDS research in un
productive directions, and most recently spawned the Lysenkoist “man-made global warming” nonsense that earned Al Gore a Nobel Prize. And it all began a half-century ago on a Colorado golf course, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower was on vacation.

  After playing twenty-seven holes of golf on September 23, 1955, at Cherry Hills Golf Club in Denver, Eisenhower complained about an upset stomach. His physician, Dr. Howard M. Snyder, treated him for heartburn and Ike returned to the nearby home of his mother-in-law, Elivera Doud, where Ike and his wife were spending the evening. After midnight, he woke up with severe chest pain, and his wife, Mamie, summoned Snyder back around 2:00 a.m. The doctor gave him some injections, one of which was later discovered to be morphine, but he did not take Eisenhower to Fitzsimons Army Medical Center until twelve hours later. When Ike was finally admitted, local doctors disagreed about the proper treatment. Meanwhile, Thomas Mattingly, chief cardiologist at Walter Reed Army Hospital, who had arrived the day after Ike had been admitted to the hospital, was convinced Ike had suffered a previous myocardial infarction (or heart attack) but had been misdiagnosed with an attack of inflammatory bowels. This blockage had caused an aneurysm. Mattingly quickly contacted Dr. Paul Dudley White, a Harvard cardiologist and one of the nation’s top heart surgeons.1

  Though it’s often overlooked in history books, Ike’s heart attack was probably the most important single medical case of the twentieth century, as it fundamentally changed the way Americans viewed food. The “science” surrounding Ike’s treatment and recovery eventually instigated a war on meat that continues to the present. Whether Ike meant to or not, he soon became a role model for “heart-healthy” living, becoming an “exercise freak,” instituting a strict postattack diet of more fruit, fewer meals, and fewer calories. In the words of Dr. Snyder, “He eats nothing for breakfast, nothing for lunch, and therefore is irritable during the noon hour. . . .”2 Yet instead of reducing cholesterol—as the experts predicted would happen—Ike’s low-fat diet increased his cholesterol the more he cut back on fats and cheese. If those foods were bad for you, as some suggested, Eisenhower’s “metrics” (to use a modern buzzword) should have improved.