"The Intellectual Activists" Blames the Victims

[SkipNewarkDE]

There is an article being emailed around now taken from The Intellectual Activist which I received this morning. It is one of the most patently offensive pieces of shit that has come my way in recent memory. It uses the platform of this disaster in New Orleans and its bungled aftermath to blame NOT the local officials... NOT the federal response, but the welfare state that caused all of the poor to be IN New Orleans.

"What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. And they don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.

But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.

People living in piles of their own trash, while petulantly complaining that other people aren't doing enough to take care of them and then shooting at those who come to rescue them—this is not just a description of the chaos at the Superdome. It is a perfect summary of the 40-year history of the welfare state and its public housing projects.

The welfare state—and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages—is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting."

Why doesn't this asshole just come out and say it? This is nice code for a more bluntly racist connotation: the dumb savage niggers propped up by our welfare system are little better than animals, and that their behavior is a result of government handouts? As you read this article, you find that its author gets his news from Fox. His wife, watching on TV noted that the architecture of the blown out areas resembled the projects of Chicago, or some such nonsense, and that this squalor encouraged criminal behavior.

It seems, too that he wants to cast blame at the local government for not having a full evacuation plan (and rightly so). Although I would warrant that there would need to be involvement of federal resources in order to actually institute such a plan.

Read this article, and get as pissed off as I did, at the racist, class-ist bullshit mindset that these people have.

[Felix Mala]

1. Is there a welfare state? Don't you get only a limited number

of months of welfare now and medicaid? There's not much else out there. Maybe some disability cheats and public housing cheats. I think everyone else is working somehow, when jobs are available, at well below the poverty line. I'd love to know what percentage of these so called "welfare state" victims actually had jobs.

Rush was using the same excuse yesterday.

[SkipNewarkDE]

2. Government-assisted housing...

apparently qualifies as "welfare state."

[K-W]

3. If by intellectual they mean propagandistic horse-shit... EOM

[Qibing Zero]

4. Social darwinism with a hint of racism.

This is how the vast majority of the corporatist thugs in DC think as well, and without exploiting the 'christian' right with issues close to home they'd never be in power.

[DBoon]

6. Social Darwinism + Racism = Fascism

nt

[ikri]

5. Nice how they miss the point

If there truly was an operational welfare state in the US there wouldn't have been a problem to begin with.

A government that actually provides welfare to its citizens would have:
1. Ensured that they fully evacuated the city prior to the hurricane hitting (like Cuba does)
2. Ensured that the buildings in the area that was likely to be worst hit were capable of withstanding the hurricane's effects (like Japan does)
3. Ensured that emergency relief was available to cope with the after effects (like every other country on Earth)

[Autonomy]

11. Don't forget China

Relocating over 3/4 MILLION people!

[dogday]

7. We are talking about people. PEOPLE YOU IDIOTS

not labels, not names, not classes, not race. People in need that need our help and rescue. Would you stand there and watch someone drown or would you run to help them? It is crazy. They are not some kind of labels, they are human beings...

[bribri16]

8. Leo Straussians and neocons at their best. They now control USA.

You must read the PNAC agenda.

[ms liberty]

9. So that's why "Old Europe" is going down in flames, I guess?

All those parasitic losers living off their govt in England and France (you know how those frenchies are) and all those other nasty countries...

Oh, wait, they're not. Look Muffy and Biff, all those dirty socialist euro's seem really healthy - and clean and peaceful and...and...Muffy, I simply must have a teensy glass of chardonnay when we get to the country club. Do you have my Xanax, Biff?

[RaleighNCDUer]

10. "Do they worry about saving their houses and property?"

Obviously the writer has never been poor. When you are poor, the very little you own take on a value not commensurate with any market value. Many of the poor in NO did not evacuate because they were afraid of losing what little they owned, which for them would be nearly irreplaceable - they can't simply get an insurance check and buy a new houseful of furniture, a new entertainment center, a new car.

Racist rant that exposes the writer for what he is.

[NoPasaran]

12. Poisonous spew from the Randroids

:puke:

[drm604]

13. The Intellectual Activist

Check out their "about" page. Read the section labeled "Who is The Intellectual Activist". I'm not going to quote all 5 paragraphs, you can click on the link and read them yourselves.

The first 4 paragraphs are pretty unremarkable. I don't necessarily agree with every last point but there's nothing totally objectionable. I like, for example, what he says about the achievements of science and the threats of ignorance and superstition.

He has a lot to say about how ideas can affect our lives and our culture, pretty unremarkable and hard to dispute.

So he seems like a pretty reasonable guy up to this point. Maybe not completely in step with my thinking, but not completely unreasonable.

But then we get to paragraph five. It starts out:

The Intellectual Activist is especially dedicated to understanding and promoting the revolutionary ideas of the 20th-century novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand...

Woops! :crazy: He's blown his cover. This says it all.

[txaslftist]

14. Ayn Rand...

Like Ann Coulter, fueling the masturbatory fantasies of burgeoning nazis for decades!

[drm604]

15. Robert Tracinski

Robert Tracinski is the editor and publisher. Check out this Google search of Robert Tracinski. The first link returned is his profile on Free Republic.
A freeper? Gee, who woulda guessed? :sarcasm:

[Alamom]

16. I live by simple rules and one is to not judge ( lest I be judged)

However, the thought crosses my mind that these people might burn in HELLFIRE.

Just a thought.