From the Telegraph UK, Liberal Harvard history professor Niall Ferguson looks at reaction to Katrina and it’s aftermath:
Disasters happen. Two hundred and fifty years ago, on November 1, 1755, the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, was flattened by an earthquake that killed thousands of its inhabitants. Like the hurricane that inundated New Orleans last week, the calamity inspired not only awe at the power of nature and sympathy for the helpless victims, but also all kinds of moral commentary. None was more profound than that of the French philosopher Voltaire.
To Voltaire, the destruction of Lisbon was proof that we do not live “in the best of all possible worlds” – a philosophical position associated with Gottfried Leibniz, but most pithily expressed in Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man: Whatever is, is right. According to Leibniz, evil and suffering were integral parts of the order God had ordained. Though they might seem inexplicable to us, they were a vital part of the divine plan; the world would, paradoxically, be less perfect without them
[…]
[…] religious and secular commentators alike have rushed to attach moral significance to the destruction of New Orleans.
Natural disasters, after all, are not like terrorist attacks. In the wake of 9/11 or the 7/7 bombings in London, we could focus our minds on the human perpetrators, struggling to make sense of their homicidal motives. With a hurricane, we need to be more creative. The banal response was, of course, to blame the city, state or federal authorities for sins of omission – a charge that prompted one of the city’s former planning officials to declare defensively: “We are all responsible.” For a hurricane?
The old-time hellfire and brimstone reaction would have been to interpret the inundation, John Wesley style, as a judgment on the city that brazenly calls itself “Party Town”. But few Christian Churches risk such strong moral medicine these days.
No such inhibitions constrain today’s Islamic extremists. The Associated Press reported that they “rejoiced in America’s misfortune, giving the storm a military rank and declaring in internet chatter that ‘Private’ Katrina had joined the global jihad. With God’s help, they declared, oil prices would hit $100-a-barrel this year.”
It would be hard to get more tasteless. Yet the same underlying impulse – to interpret the disaster as confirmation of one’s own ideological position – was at work among many American liberals too. Opponents of the war in Iraq were not slow to point out that National Guardsmen who should have been on hand to rescue hurricane victims were instead failing to prevent lethal stampedes in far-away Baghdad. The usual suspects could not resist pointing out that most of the people trapped in the flooded city were poor African-Americans, who lacked the means to flee the hurricane.
And, inevitably, environmentalists rushed to portray the storm as retribution for the Bush administration’s refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol. After all, they argued, our consumption of fossil fuels causes global warming, and global warming leads to more frequent “extreme weather events”, not to mention rising sea levels. Could the prospect of even higher gasoline prices, as a direct result of storm damage, finally bring Americans to their senses about climate change?
Having recently shown one of my classes a map projecting the effects of rising sea levels on the eastern seaboard of the United States (guess which city disappears first?), I must confess that this was also my initial reaction. Only last week, after all, I was fulminating in this column about the way we pollute the world’s oceans. It was only with difficulty that I banished the thought of Katrina as Neptune’s vengeance.
The reality is, of course, that natural disasters have no moral significance. They just happen, and we can never exactly predict when or where. In 2003 – to take just a single year – 41,000 people died in Iran when an earthquake struck the city of Bam, more than 2,000 died in a smaller earthquake in Algeria, and just under 1,500 died in India in a freak heatwave. Altogether, at least 100 Americans were killed that year as a result of storms or forest fires.
Natural disasters – please, let’s not call them “Acts of God” – killed many more people than international terrorism that year (according to the State Department, total global casualties due to terrorism in 2003 were 4,271, of whom precisely none were in North America). On the other hand, disasters kill many fewer people each year than heart disease (around seven million), HIV/Aids (around three million) and road traffic accidents (around one million). No doubt if all the heart attacks or car crashes happened in a single day in a single city, we would pay them more attention than we do.
As Voltaire understood, hurricanes, like earthquakes, should serve to remind us of our common vulnerability as human beings in the face of a pitiless Nature. Too bad that today, just as in 1755, we prefer to interpret them in spurious ways, that divide rather than unite us.
Compare and contrast.
****
(h/t Elephants in Academia)
Ah, a light in the wildnerness! Proving, I suppose, how rare true intelligence is….
“Two hundred and fifty years ago, on November 1, 1755, the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, was flattened by an earthquake that killed thousands of its inhabitants.”
I blame Bush and the neocons.
<style, as a judgment on the city that brazenly calls itself “Party Townâ€Â. But few Christian Churches risk such strong moral medicine these days.</blockquote>
In large part because it’s bad medicine. I could quote verse after verse detailing a balanced, proper theological view on tragedy in the world, but I won’t. Rather, I’ll just sum it up with the idea “it rains on the just and the unjust alike”. Using natural disasters as “proof” of God’s displeasure with humanity is tacky, and serves only to slander God himself. The latter is something that every Christian worth his salt should strive to avoid.
Nertz, I messed up the blockquote tag.
Jeff,
First – Thank you, thank you for making this site available to all of us.
And second – I have never had a problem with people who are on the opposite side of an argument. I have a friend who is far left (and always has been) and we discuss things such as Katrina, the Iraq war, etc. all the time. I even understand where he is coming from, even if I don’t happen to agree with him (or him with me).
What DOESN’T happen in our discussions though, is that I never have to wipe his spittle off of my face because he confuses his anger at his parents (or whatever) with the topic at hand. When I read the trolls who wander through here, or the Kos Kids, I am awed by the anger that literally burns through their arguments (I’m being charitable with the word “arguments”). As I repeat over and over, they remind me of eighth graders who have just discovered that the principal of the school is a neo-liberal, and won’t intervene no matter WHAT they say, or how much profanity they lace their comments with. It is unfortunate that no one has ever taught them the meaning of shame, because without it, no human being will ever be capable of growing and changing with the passage of time. I can’t help but come to the conclusion that hubris is the defining motivation of the left. I just LOVE it when someone who can’t even spell check calls me stupid! I would like to thank the Clinton administration for teaching so many of these morons that truth is defined as much by the omission of facts as it is by the statement of same. I guess we can only be amused that the Democratic party has been taken over by such a wondrous coalition of blockheads.
Lets call a spade a spade…
CINDY said it best…
DAMN BUSHITLER AND HIS IRRESPONSIBLE ENVIRONMENTAL
POLICIES…..
Anyone?
Wow, the contrast…I take it Northernboy is from the Pink tribe?
Damn you Goldstein, now you’ve got your trolls writing your posts for you.
Just how do those Joooooo mind rays work, anyway?
I take it Northernboy is from the Pink tribe?
Susan,
Let’s stick to the facts; that’s ”Norhternboy.”
TW: “steps,” as in he should enter some mental health program with 12 of them.
Cordially…
The dirty little secret remains that if President Clinton were in the middle of his fourth term right now, the federal response would not have been any better, and it really isn’t too hard to imagine that it might have been worse. And yet, with a tear on his eye and his shoulders hunched from feeling the pain of so many, President Clinton would be lauded for the magnificent federal response and given plaudits for saving all those poor people in New Orleans that George Bush has abandoned—because he cares. Go ahead, tell me this isn’t true.
Life has become like Eric Segal’s Love Story, caring means never having to say your sorry. All sins of commission and omission are forgiven if you care enough in our therapeutic society, whereas hard-headed realism’s successes continue to be denigrated because they are motivated by cold-hearted, callous men who defiantly continue to associate responsibility with authority. Personal responsibility continues to give ground to the authority of the village. And, of course, emotion trumps reason time after time after time…
Turing word: months
Fourth term?
No sech animal. FDR scared ‘em, he did.
SB: final
Given Clinton’s comments on the disaster he might agree in part with Charles’ statement.
Wait a minute.
This guy is a Harvard history prof? And he wrote something that made sense?
I’m going to start stockpiling food. The Rapture is going to happen any minute now …
Spam word: soon. I already said, “any minute now”. Pay attention!!!!
Let’s end this natural disaster menace once and for all!
you did NOT just link to faf!blog.
NorhternBoy:
This is the level of discourse I would expect at Pandegon.
Wow! Maybe they can fly in Martin Sheen (the virtual president) along with Mother Sheehan (absolute moral authority), and they can do a man on the street interview with NorhternBoy. I bet that’ll play well on Olbermann.