Redstate

By Leverkuhn Posted in User Blogs — Comments (3) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Well, today my guests left for Houston, TX where so many former residents of New Orleans are going.  Some of you may be aware that over the past two nights I'd been hosting several Hurricane refugees in my apartment. I don't know what is worse: watching the people on TV suffer, or watching people in my living room trying to  decide what, if anything, they can do to set their lives back in order.  

Still, I take comfort in the fact that my guests were among the lucky ones.  They got out in time. Not only that, but they got out with two working cars, and they even managed to move two of their 18-wheel trucks from the NO area before Katrina hit the city. Did I mention that two of my guests were truck drivers? It was essentially a big, extended family group.  I wish I could tell you their names, or show you some of the pictures I took, but I didn't ask them for permission so I won't. I feel that privacy is one of the few decencies left to the people fleeing these tragedies, and I will not deprive them of it.

I know that this is a political blog, but I honestly believe that a tragedy like this should transcend politics.  Right now, I feel a deep affection for Democratic Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco. A mother of six children, and a grandmother of seven, she has become something of a matriarchal figure to us all. It helps that she is a deeply religious woman (devout Catholic), and her appeal to the residents of this state to "pray that God give us all the physical and spiritual strength to work through this crisis and rebuild" gives me considerable hope.  

As our governor attempts to supervise the biggest rescue effort since Dunkirk, I am gratified to know that she spends a part of every day on her knees before God. And I'm glad she lets us know it. This task is so big, and the stakes are so high, that I'm not sure any mortal being could face it without the eternal God in their corner.

Similarly, I am thankful to Senators Landrieu and Vitter.  And I also thank President Bush.  Not just for giving this crisis his undivided attention, nor even for all the money he will almost certainly spend. I'd like to thank him for these twenty-five words: "new communities will flourish, the great city of New Orleans will get back on its feet and America will be a stronger place for it."  There are times when I wish the president had a penchant for rhetorical flourish, but this is not one of them. Granted, it would have been better if those words had come via a bullhorn. But he said them, and that's what counts. What we in Southeast Louisiana need to hear is that this is not the end of us.  Things must change, and we know it, but we need to know that we have a future. We need to know that New Orleans has a future.  We need to know that the city that Thomas Jefferson paid for, and that Andrew Jackson fought for will not be surrendered to the sea. I think the President has said as much.

Who am I not thankful for? Well, Denny Hastert for one.  I am not thankful to him for saying the one thing nobody, certainly no American, should say in a time like this: that we should give up on New Orleans.  I'm also not thankful for you Joseph Cannon. There is a dark corner of hell reserved for all people who exploit the misfortunes of others. But you, you human waste, deserve to have a special room carved out for you beneath the more respectable denizens of that part of Hades. Did it even occur to you that New Orleans, which Bush and Blanco and Landrieu and Vitter are working so hard to save, is actually BLUE-STATE territory? Granted, the rest of Louisiana is reliably red, but New Orleans is, or was, one of the few Democratic bastions in the South. Are you even capable of grasping such a concept?  Are you even capable to understanding that in Southeast Louisiana there are no Democrats and Republicans anymore, but only human beings trying to help each other? That's asking too much for you to understand, isn't it?

But I can not dwell on people like that.  I can't take it.  Not when there are people like the good folks at the Methodist Church on Dalrymple Street, or the Assemblies of God Church on Goodwood Street.  Those folks have heart; they have lots and lots of heart. The first church gave my several bags of groceries, boxes of clothes (including badly needed baby clothes), and best of all, diapers.  In the midst of all this chaos, it's good to know that some mothers don't have to worry about diapers. The A/G church has been running a soup kitchen, and their pastor, well, I fear I might compromise someone's privacy if I told you what he did, but let's just say he's a good man, and a generous man.