I just happen to be reading this over at InstaPundit and following the links; and I have come to a conclusion: Phil Gramm was absolutely correct, we are a Nation of whiners.

Compare and Contrast the following quotes:

New York Hurricane Sandy Victims:

“We’re going to die! We’re going to freeze! We got 90-year-old people!” — “You don’t understand. You gotta get your trucks down here on the corner now. It’s been three days!”

Said on twitter before Hurricane Hit: (Via InfoWars)

“Bout to do some looting when this hurricane finally hits….gonna get a new laptop and tv…this hurricane might be the best thing to happen.” (SOURCE)

“If this hurricane gets real bad I’m looting stores ! i always wanted to do that.” (SOURCE)

“I’m gonna go looting once this hurricane hits Utica.” (SOURCE)

“Has #HurricaneSandy made landfall yet? My bitch ass is ready to go looting!” (SOURCE)

“helllll yeah I’m gonna go looting after the storm hits.” (SOURCE)

“Who wants to go looting with me when Sandy hits?! I need some new shit! (SOURCE)

….and you know what? They did too, Check out this report here, of people looting after Hurricane Sandy Hit.

In contrast, check out what Nashville Resident wrote after the Nashville Flood of 2010: (via FreeRepublic)

Allow me a moment to step away from the usual voice of this website.

What I am about to write has absolutely nothing to do with hockey.

If you live outside of Nashville, you may not be aware, but our city was hit by a 500-year flood over the last few days. The national news coverage gave us 15 minutes, but went back to focusing on a failed car bomb and an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. While both are clearly important stories, was that any reason to ignore our story? It may not be as terror-sexy as a failed car bomb or as eco-sexy as an oil spill, but that’s no reason to be ignored.

The Cumberland River crested at its highest level in over 80 years. Nashville had its highest rainfall totals since records began. People drowned. Billions of dollars in damage occurred. It is the single largest disaster to hit Middle Tennessee since the Civil War. And yet…no one knows about it.

Does it really matter? Eventually, it will…as I mentioned, there are billions of dollars in damage. It seems bizarre that no one seems to be aware that we just experienced what is quite possibly the costliest non-hurricane disaster in American history. The funds to rebuild will have to come from somewhere, which is why people need to know. It’s hard to believe that we will receive much relief if there isn’t a perception that we need it.

But let’s look at the other side of the coin for a moment. A large part of the reason that we are being ignored is because of who we are. Think about that for just a second. Did you hear about looting? Did you hear about crime sprees? No…you didn’t. You heard about people pulling their neighbors off of rooftops. You saw a group of people trying to move two horses to higher ground. No…we didn’t loot. Our biggest warning was, “Don’t play in the floodwater.” When you think about it…that speaks a lot for our city. A large portion of why we were being ignored was that we weren’t doing anything to draw attention to ourselves. We were handling it on our own.

Some will be quick to find fault in the way rescue operations were handled, but the fact of the matter is that the catastrophe could not have been prevented and it is simply ignorant beyond all reason to suggest otherwise. It is a flood. It was caused by rain. You can try to find a face to stick this tragedy to, but you’ll be wrong.

Parts of Nashville that could never even conceivably be underwater were underwater. Some of them still are. Opry Mills and the Opryland Hotel are, for all intents and purposes, destroyed. People died sitting in standstill traffic on the Interstate. We saw boats going down West End. And, of course, we all saw the surreal image of the portable building from Lighthouse Christian floating into traffic and being destroyed when cars were knocked into it. I’m still having trouble comprehending all of it.

And yet…life will go on. We’ll go back to work, to school, to our lives…and we’ll carry on. In a little over a month, I’ll be on this website talking about the draft. In October, we’ll be discussing the new Predators’ season with nary a thought of these past few days. But in a way, they changed everyone in this town. We now know that that it can happen to us…but also know that we can handle it.

Because we are Nashville

 
Now, I know what happened in New York was horrible; but I just cannot help but think that Phil Gramm was right. We are nothing but a nation of whiners, who expect the Government to cater to our every whim. It is a sick and sad, however, I do not place the blame directly on the people of New York City. I blame the media, and conditioning of people from their youth by public school systems. People these days are not taught self-reliance and how to survive, if something like a Hurricane comes up. They are taught from a young age, that the Government is your big protector and nanny and will keep you from harms way, and if you end up a victim, the Government will give you everything you need. This sadly, was never the intended role of any sort of Government at all.

Quite simply, it is simply a matter of common sense, if you know a Hurricane is coming up, you grab all of your personal items that you wish to keep; and you get the hell out of the path of the Hurricane! Now for the elderly, the common excuse is that they could not leave. There is always a way to get out, someone somewhere could have gotten those people out, and helped them get their important stuff out too. The truth is, either they did not want to leave or no one wanted to be bothered with them at all.

I know that I said that I was not going to politicize this, but the way I see it; if the NYT does not mind doing it and if the NY Governor does not mind doing it, neither do I. It is sick and sad that people are conditioned to rely on the Government for everything. I could get into a discussion about race and self-reliance, but I do not want to get called a racist, by the Frankfurt School types on the left and the right.

What gets me, is all the money that will be spent, in the name of “Humanity.” Money that we do not have, it is amazing, we talk about being broke; until a disaster comes and all of the sudden, the money comes out of thin air! My question is, where is all this money coming from? What programs are being raided, just so some idiot person, who was too stupid to get out of the storms path can feel taken care of?

It sounds heartless. But it is the truth.

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Announcement: I am fundraising for the blog, care to help? (There’s a big different between Government being a nanny, and Conservatives helping each other out, for the benefit of the unlearned.)