[%] Anticipating hate mail

So I hit "publish post" on the last installment of the blog, and I realize as the blogger ticker tells me we're 100% published that telling people, "the people to blame for the levees failing in New Orleans don't live 1100 mile away from New Orleans", I am bound to get some negative response. I'm going to anticipate some of that flack here at lunchtime since I have an hour to kill:

And you call yourself a Christian?

Yes, in fact, I call myself a Christian. I'm not sure why that's an objection to the problem that Louisiana built a city in a ditch on the coast and wanted the rest of the country to pay for the priviledge of keeping the Mississippi River, Lake Pontchartrain and the Gulf of Mexico out of said city. Especially when said city was pouring money into the local tax coffers as a pretty high volume from people who don't normally live there anyway.

So you're saying that the Bible agrees with you -- this is the Gospel truth?

No, I didn't say that. I would like to go on-record that the Bible doesn't say anything about who specifically should have done something about the levees. It does say in genereal, though, that people in political power ought to be using it to punish lawbreakers, and since New Orleans had a murder rate ten times the national average, the state and local authorities obviously weren't doing that. If the local authorities weren't doing something about crime, what makes you think they would or were willing to do something about something less-obvious but more important -- like making sure the wall of earth that is keeping the city from being swamped and destroyed doesn't fall down?

Why would you defend George Bush when he is sending our kids to be killed to Iraq?

I've already answered that question.

So this is your idea of Christian love?

Telling the truth is always my idea of Christian love. For example, I think that when the Huffington Post "reports" that black hurricane victims in New Orleans have begun eating corpses to survive (note: I see that there's a retraction now at the top of the page; I'm glad they had the moxie to admit they were wrong), I would wonder why they would report such a thing without one single witness or schred of evidence -- unless it is to foment fear and revulsion. So my idea of Christian love opposes that kind of brainless, predatory, imflammatory rhetoric for any reason -- especially for any political reason.

My idea of Christian love also includes personal responsibility. The smarty-wonk in the back of the room is whispering to his neighbor, "except for George Bush", but is the President of the United States responsible for every public works project in the country? For example, last year they widened the road in front of my store, and it took them a year to finish -- it almost put us out of business. Should I have been blaming President Bush for that act of economic terrorism?

See: personal responsibility means "things one was personally responsible for". For example, the Governor of Lousiana was responsible for the tax money collected from New Orleans over the last few years -- and she might have found a way to scrape out some of that money to drop a couple of extra sand bags onto the levees of that city with a $4.9 billion tourist trade. The Mayor of New Orleans could have sent out the school buses for people who didn't have a way to leave New Orleans, but apparently he didn't think of that. Should George Bush have called the Mayor and said, "Hey friend, did you send out the school busses to pick up stragglers? See: I have some troop transports I could send you, but they'll take two days to get there before they will be a meaningful resource. How about the city busses? Have you called Avis and Hertz?"

So any lectures on "Christian love" ought to account for the "love" (Christian or otherwise) of the key local officials who were substantially less-than-heroic in managing their own political duties. Where's the love in demonstrating complete and perfect incompetence in executing your duties of office?

What about the doggie "Snowball", you heartless monkey?

I think that Christian love forbids cruelty to animals, but it does not put animals on the same stage as human beings. I think it is better that Snowball is lost and the boy is saved than it would be than Snowball was not lost and something worse happened to that boy.

All other complaints can comment as haloscan allows.