News from Around the World

Before I come off as any more cruel and insensitive than I just have I do need to make a point to say that I understand not everyone knew of the mandatory evacuation. Then again, when did it become the duty of our government to go door to door and hold the hand of every individual who isn’t willing to keep up on important happenings in their own country or their own state? When did it become the duty of our government to babysit the people who live there? The answer: never. Sure, there are large groups of people who claim that the government didn’t do its job in warning people that a hurricane was coming. Had the tables been turned, however, and had the government simply failed to adequately remind people that, say, tax day was looming, none would have complained. Examples such as this lead me to believe that people love to blame their government for things that they are too uninformed, too lazy, too ignorant, too ashamed, or otherwise too ill-equipped to handle. And you know what? That isn’t right. In fact, the moment we start to complain that we are not living in a country that holds the hand of each of its citizens through every natural (and notice I said natural–as in Mother Nature–here, not a consequence of Dubya, of global warming, or of someone forgetting to pay the power bill) disaster that we experience is the moment that we can expect to lose so many of the rights we do have as citizens of this country. Simply put, we cannot have it both ways. We cannot have the government hand-holding along with the freedoms we feel so entitled to. It is either one or the other. And I, personally, am glad to take freedoms and their consequence of being made to take responsibility for my own actions (be it staying informed, evacuating once a mandatory evacuation has been issued for the city I live in, or something else) over the loss of these freedoms any day. In fact, I am willing to bet that most people would prefer their “freedom” over the kind of government we would have if all of the things we moan and complain about once tragedy has struck were realized.