Anarchy in New Orleans

Posted September 1, 2005, 11:38 a.m.

The situation in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina continues to deteriorate as efforts to evacuate survivors continue. Looting continues and rescue teams have come under attack from snipers as hospitals and shelters run out of food and supplies. Meanwhile, there are reports that storm victims are being raped and beaten by mobs at the New Orleans Convention Center (being used as a secondary shelter). Police have been unable to restore order and Mayor Ray Nagin issued a “desperate SOS” for outside help.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency halted all boat rescues after armed looters threatened medics and overturned a boat. Additionally, the evacuation of Charity Hospital was halted after doctors and National Guard troops came under fire from a sniper. There are reports that a National Guard rescue helicopter was also fired upon. New Orleans Police and National Guard troops are struggling to maintain law and order without electricity or communication equipment in a paralyzed city.

Scott Bradford has been putting his opinions on his website since 1995—before most people knew what a website was. He has been a professional web developer in the public- and private-sector for over twenty years. He is an independent constitutional conservative who believes in human rights and limited government, and a Catholic Christian whose beliefs are summarized in the Nicene Creed. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from George Mason University. He loves Pink Floyd and can play the bass guitar . . . sort-of. He’s a husband, pet lover, amateur radio operator, and classic AMC/Jeep enthusiast.

Quotes

You will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved.

It is our attitude toward free thought and free expression that will determine our fate.

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. . . .

It is not reasonable to say that a murder is automatically worse because it is motivated by racial or religious animus. . . . Murder is murder. All murders are hateful.

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens. . . .

Churches . . . that are nothing more than a loosely bound assembly of individuals committed to finding their own ‘truth,’ are no longer the church in any meaningful sense, because there is no shared belief.

For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.

Forced compassion always short-circuits the human heart and destroys the integrity of true and loving charity.

Building from scratch isn’t too different from building from a kit, except that you have to make your own kit.

Saints are not abnormal cases to be studied by a modernistic doctor. They were—they are—normal, with flesh like yours. And they conquered.

We should recognize how in a culture where each person wants to be bearer of his or her own subjective truth, it becomes difficult for citizens to devise a common plan which transcends individual gain and personal ambitions.

He who, by causing pain to others, wishes to obtain pleasure for himself, he, entangled in the bonds of hatred, will never be free from hatred.

If I didn’t know, from my own case, that I’m conscious, my knowledge of your neural processes would give me no reason to suspect that you are.

The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so faith apart from works is dead.

The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face.

Literature should not be suppressed merely because it offends the moral code of the censor.

There is no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing.

I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honor than that she should in a cowardly manner become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonor.

Mowing your lawn is not a slippery slope to shaving your dog.