Thursday, June 01, 2006
Kindness of strangers
Polistra is feeling sort of Blanche DuBoisish in this scene.
The house is a replica of the Katrina Cottage, designed by Marianne Cusato as part of an effort to re-house Katrina refugees in more comfortable, natural and attractive quarters than the trailers which FEMA was supposed to provide.
The cottage is designed to be mass produced, and to be resilient in the face of wind and flooding. It's tiny (308 square feet!) but efficient, and can be expanded to form part of a bigger house.
There's a good long article on the subject in the latest issue of American Enterprise, dealing with the New Urbanist movement among architects. The essence of New Urbanism really should harmonize with basic American conservatism, but until now the architects (like all other professions) have been so deeply imbued with leftist tastes and leftist rhetoric that no conservative could stand to get near them.
Mississippi Renewal is starting to bring the two sides together, with several interesting results.
Needless to say, FEMA will not help with any of this. Because the Cottage is built without wheels, it counts as "permanent housing" under FEMA regs, so it won't get any funding. FEMA only funds trailers, and because of other regulations it must leave those trailers to rot in storage. All very logical to somebody, I'm sure. So the whole Cottage project must depend on the kindness of strangers.
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Over and over and over again, we see bureaucrats following their Regulations and performing their Due Process Of Law to insure that government never does anything useful, only gives harmful results.
If we had a president, he would crack the whip on bureaucrats and remind them of the basic purpose of their agencies.
Same with the military and the latest 'massacre'. Bush allows the enemy to own the field in propaganda, saying only that we must go through the Due Process Of Law.
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO.
We must stop trying to appear Better Than Them. Every time we try to Behave Nicely in order to look Better Than Them, we only lose a battle and cede more territory to Them.
The plain fact is that WE ARE BETTER THAN THEM. Western Civilization is better than Arab savagery by a long shot. By a light year. By a hundred parsecs. If we must do horrible things in the course of a war, we must do horrible things. Kill as many civilians as necessary to eliminate the carriers of savagery. We understood this in 1945, and we won that war SPECIFICALLY because we understood it.
(Qualifying note: I am not saying that the United States is better than any other nation. On most important measures like prosperity and freedom, we are about 4th or 5th. But we're the only nation that has the resources to fight for Western Civilization, so that the other nations on this side can be even better than us!) ¶ 10:46 AM
Polistra is feeling sort of Blanche DuBoisish in this scene.
The house is a replica of the Katrina Cottage, designed by Marianne Cusato as part of an effort to re-house Katrina refugees in more comfortable, natural and attractive quarters than the trailers which FEMA was supposed to provide.
The cottage is designed to be mass produced, and to be resilient in the face of wind and flooding. It's tiny (308 square feet!) but efficient, and can be expanded to form part of a bigger house.
There's a good long article on the subject in the latest issue of American Enterprise, dealing with the New Urbanist movement among architects. The essence of New Urbanism really should harmonize with basic American conservatism, but until now the architects (like all other professions) have been so deeply imbued with leftist tastes and leftist rhetoric that no conservative could stand to get near them.
Mississippi Renewal is starting to bring the two sides together, with several interesting results.
Needless to say, FEMA will not help with any of this. Because the Cottage is built without wheels, it counts as "permanent housing" under FEMA regs, so it won't get any funding. FEMA only funds trailers, and because of other regulations it must leave those trailers to rot in storage. All very logical to somebody, I'm sure. So the whole Cottage project must depend on the kindness of strangers.
-----
Over and over and over again, we see bureaucrats following their Regulations and performing their Due Process Of Law to insure that government never does anything useful, only gives harmful results.
If we had a president, he would crack the whip on bureaucrats and remind them of the basic purpose of their agencies.
Same with the military and the latest 'massacre'. Bush allows the enemy to own the field in propaganda, saying only that we must go through the Due Process Of Law.
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO.
We must stop trying to appear Better Than Them. Every time we try to Behave Nicely in order to look Better Than Them, we only lose a battle and cede more territory to Them.
The plain fact is that WE ARE BETTER THAN THEM. Western Civilization is better than Arab savagery by a long shot. By a light year. By a hundred parsecs. If we must do horrible things in the course of a war, we must do horrible things. Kill as many civilians as necessary to eliminate the carriers of savagery. We understood this in 1945, and we won that war SPECIFICALLY because we understood it.
(Qualifying note: I am not saying that the United States is better than any other nation. On most important measures like prosperity and freedom, we are about 4th or 5th. But we're the only nation that has the resources to fight for Western Civilization, so that the other nations on this side can be even better than us!) ¶ 10:46 AM
