Why Are Looters Always Democrats?
By Richard Davis (09/05/05)
Maybe it’s the Democrat tradition of taking other people’s money and property and believing you’re entitled to it. Or perhaps it’s the years of big-government paternalism that destroys any sense of personal or civic responsibility. Whatever the reason, when the mayhem begins, the looters will invariably be Democrats, or at least products of Democratic households and neighborhoods. Does the party owe America an explanation?
I bring this up only because Democrats and their media lackeys are having a field day blaming Bush for everything from the hurricane itself (“If only he had signed Kyoto!”) to the criminal orgy of looting and destruction (“Why didn’t he stop us?!”). Only a Democrat would loot the local Wal-Mart and then hold the president responsible.
For the record, incompetent and lawless Democrats first failed New Orleans, directly causing the misery that was to follow, and then plundered it. The mayor, police chief and all other city leaders were Democrats. Seldom has a city been so poorly served. And while New Orleans went under, it was a Democrat who sat quaking in the governor’s mansion, the water way over her head. As for the hoodlums doing the looting, vandalizing, raping and random criminalizing, not a Republican in the bunch.
When Democrats face self-inflicted failure of this magnitude, they do what years of liberal dissembling have taught them to do -- they blame somebody else (Bush). Then they play the race card (racist Bush). Of course, had Bush even suggested in advance of Katrina that troops would be standing by to maintain order, the Democrats and their race professionals would have gone apoplectic over the suggestion that their party faithful in the city were savages-in-waiting.
But many were just that, and they didn’t wait long. Everyone else in this Democratic community seemed helpless, the victims of decades of mollycoddling liberalism. The city’s feckless mayor and officials could only stand in front of microphones and plead for Washington to come and save them from the elements and each other. Then, in a ploy to absolve themselves and their party members, looters and all, of any culpability, they called the rescuers racists for not coming sooner.
We don’t expect much from political parties these days, and God knows we don’t get much, but shouldn’t there be some accountability demanded here? Scenes from New Orleans smeared a city, a race, a party and a country. How do Democrats explain the hooligan wing of their party? The response of this wing to disasters and social emergencies -- even increasingly to elections -- tells us all we need to know about the failure of Democratic politics.
And so now, unable to face a pretty ugly truth about themselves, Democrats give us more excuses, more guilt-mongering, more racial hypocrisy. They can’t even bring themselves to condemn the looters. They need their votes.
Imagine a party that tried seriously to help its underclass by addressing moral and ethical issues candidly and honestly. Democrats can’t do that because to suggest one has personal responsibility is to put the lie to the entire victimhood racket. Democrats have stood by for decades, paralyzed by their own liberal rhetoric and their self-interest in government largess, as generations of their young men and women descended into crime and immorality. Their only response was to make excuses for them and demand more money for themselves. Some help that’s been.
Looters belong to that sizable and growing criminal constituency of the Democratic Big Tent. This is the party, after all, fighting state by state to garner the right to vote for illegal aliens and felons, both of which are loyal Democrats. The few looters in New Orleans who will actually be charged with crimes can count on their party officials to come to their defense, closely followed by the party registrar. It’s a big, all-you-can-carry kind of tent.
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