First one:
Houston is socially resilient. Texas’s culture may strike some as atavistic macho-cowboy silliness, but, as it turns out, when the water gets high you really want to have some atavistically macho cowboys around, particularly if they are in possession of the flat-bottomed boats favored by the justly celebrated “Cajun Navy.” The now-famous Houston Chronicle photo of a stoic-looking man wading through the flood waters while carrying an exhausted woman who is herself carrying a child is an iconic expression of certain realities that are not, whatever the voguish academic nonsense claims, “socially constructed.” Whatever the culture of Texas is, it is not a culture of helplessness.
Unlike what we saw with Katrina. Second one:
But what really works about Houston — and about America — is that line of guys saying, “I have a bass boat, a raincoat, and some rope — what can I do to help?” There’s no army in the world that can replace that, and no amount of treasure that can buy it.
Cajun Navy, Redneck Army – ordinary people saying “here am I, send me”.
And then Matthew Dowd, the so-called Republican representative (more’s like a true blue Squish) on Meet the Press proves why we can’t have nice things with a sideways slap at the above. Instead of recognizing the efforts of the above, he made quite the example of himself in showing that Republicans, too, are the Party of Big Government (just not QUITE as large as the Democrats but that crack between them is almost infinitesimal:
“This demonstrates why we need certain institutions of our democracy, institutions that were put in place by our Founders in this. All of this talk that we’re going to destroy the institution, we’re going to break it down and all this, I think this crisis and this demonstration, demonstrates how standards of democracy of how we talk to each other, how we related to each other, the institutions that help fix the problems. how necessary they are.”
Yep, we plebes just can’t exist without the Guiding Hand of Government doling out all that money (and didn’t say from us in the first place).
And then went onto about how important “undocumented people” are going to be SO important as the cleanup will happen, pretty much, on the backs of the DACA kids. Nice way to go in defending an underclass, Dowd!
(H/T: National Review)
