{"id":5738,"date":"2011-08-31T00:02:08","date_gmt":"2011-08-31T07:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=5738"},"modified":"2011-08-31T00:02:08","modified_gmt":"2011-08-31T07:02:08","slug":"ron-paul-puts-ideology-before-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/08\/31\/ron-paul-puts-ideology-before-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Ron Paul Puts Ideology Before History"},"content":{"rendered":"

While the Republican response to Hurricane Irene has been inhumanely draconian, holding people in need of relief hostage to taking more from those who can least afford it to offset the relief.  The worst of all in this regard is Ron Paul (R-TX), because he proposes to disband FEMA and says the federal government has no business dealing with relief.  He suggests that in 1900, the residents of Galveston needed no federal relief, so lets look back at the history to which Paul would return us.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"RonTin\"As Hurricane Irene pummeled the East Coast this weekend, flooding homes and businesses, knocking out power, and killing at least ten people, Texas Congressman and Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul asserted<\/a> that the federal government should not help with disaster recovery<\/strong>. Americans, Paul said, need to "transition out of the dependency on the federal government." He implied that federal disaster assistance was something new. "We should be like 1900<\/strong>," he said. "We should be like 1940, 1950, 1960." Without a doubt, the role of the federal government grew tremendously over the course of the twentieth century. But Paul’s imagination of a mythic American past of individual self-reliance is bad history<\/strong>. A brief review of major storms shows that these events have long involved federal help and, in fact, have been catalysts for a more active government.<\/p>\n

Let’s use Congressman Paul’s timeline, which starts in 1900. That was the year a major storm decimated Galveston, in Paul’s home state. Because of the failure of existing structures to deal adequately with rebuilding, the hurricane prompted citizens to centralize power in the hands of municipal managers and experts. They wanted to make government more active and useful in times of crisis<\/strong>. The so-called "commission form" of government was a key innovation of the Progressive Era, a period conservatives today look back to as the beginning of the end for local self-sufficiency. Texans at the time, though, celebrated their new sea wall and other improvements they achieved through their newly empowered government\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Huffington Post<\/a>><\/p>\n

I urge you to click through to learn the history of federal involvement in disaster relief.<\/font><\/p>\n

Now more important is what actually happened in Galveston in 1900, since Paul uses it as an example.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"31storm\"On September 8, 1900, the greatest natural disaster to ever strike the United States occurred at Galveston, Texas. In the early evening hours of September 8, a hurricane came ashore at Galveston bringing with it a great storm surge that inundated most of Galveston Island and the city of Galveston. As a result, much of the city was destroyed and at least 6,000 people were killed in a few hours time<\/strong>. The following is the account of Isaac M. Cline, the senior Weather Bureau employee present at Galveston, of the events leading up to the storm, his personal experiences in the storm, and the aftermath. The horror of Galveston is only partly described in this work. He was probably somewhat still in shock when he wrote this report as he lost his wife when his house collapsed during the storm and virtually all of his possessions<\/strong>. In a later biographical work, he referred to the shooting of hundreds of looters by vigilantes in the aftermath of the storm and the cremation of hundreds of unknown storm victims who otherwise would have decomposed where they lay<\/strong>. This particular report is excerpted from the Monthly Weather Review for September, 1900\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <NOAA<\/a>><\/p>\n

Again, I urge you to click through and read this man\u2019s story, and ask yourself, is this what you want for America today?<\/font><\/p>\n

I have  heard Paul explain his rationale.  He said that it makes no sense to spend federal money to keep rebuilding in places where nature will just knock it down again.  That appears to make sense, but it\u2019s just a sophism.  The gulf coast and the eastern seaboard are vulnerable to hurricanes, so we\u2019d need to evacuate those areas.  The Mississippi river and its tributaries are vulnerable to floods, so we\u2019d have to evacuate those areas.  The plains have tornados, so evacuate them.  California is vulnerable to earthquakes, so evacuate that state too.  Even here in Portland OR, we have an active volcano right in the middle of town.  If we moved all Americans to places safe from natural disasters, if there are any, we\u2019d be stacked many layers deep.<\/font><\/p>\n

We cannot avoid natural disasters, but we can be there for each other when disasters happen.  The federal government is empowered to \u201cprovide for the common good\u201d.  Federal disaster relief is the most efficient and cost effective way to do this, as long as Republicans do not have the opportunity to put a \u201cBrownie\u201d in charge of the relief efforts, or curtail the agency\u2019s funding.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While the Republican response to Hurricane Irene has been inhumanely draconian, holding people in need of relief hostage to taking more from those who can least afford it to offset the relief.  The worst of all in this regard is Ron Paul (R-TX), because he proposes to disband FEMA and says the federal government has […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}