CNN.com - Gov. Bush: Wilma response will 'be better' - Oct 27, 2005

CNN.com - Gov. Bush: Wilma response will 'be better' - Oct 27, 2005
I am in total agreement with Governor Bush on this issue, and I applaud his courage and his willingness to tell it like it is. The residents of Florida are no strangers to the strength, ferocity and capricious nature of hurricanes; the state is the target of at least one of the storms almost every year; hell three hit the state last year, and one so far this year. So the cries and harping fall on deaf ears.

And it is not as if Hurricane Wilma cropped up overnight and blew ashore with little warning; Floridians had a week and a half to prepare for the Category Three storm, so there is no excuse for the level of complaining we now hear coming from the state’s residents, and no excuse for the long line we see as people wait for food, water, ice handouts. And wouldn’t the prudent person fill up the gas take BEFORE the storm hit? There isn’t a resident in the state—unless he or she was living in complete isolation—that will get to believe that he or she was caught off-guard by the storm; please!

Have we Americans become so accustomed to the government taking care of us that we have lost the ability to take care of ourselves? Increasingly there is a case to be made that too much government help is detrimental to the proper functioning of any society. Citizens owe so level of responsibility to themselves and society to take care of their persons and family; certainly having three days of food, water, and other essential supplies on hade in a state prone to natural disasters is not an unreasonably request.

And let us not forget, that our fellow citizens lack of proper preparation for an event that should be second nature to them by now, costs us all…