Newt Gingrich says that the Hurricane Katrina victims were too “uneducated” to get out of the way of a hurricane.

How can you have the mess we have in New Orleans, and not have had deep investigations of the federal government, the state government, the city government, and the failure of citizenship in the Ninth Ward, where 22,000 people were so uneducated and so unprepared, they literally couldn’t get out of the way of a hurricane.

Newt is right too, and he managed to make his point without having to use any sophomoric taunts.

My only quibble with Newt’s comments is that the problem with many of the Katrina victims is that they aren’t so much uneducated (though that’s a problem as well) as they’re entirely beholden to the nanny state.  They knew a hurricane was coming, but rather than act to get themselves out of the way they waited for the government to come along and rescue them.  Afterwards, many of them also sat around and screamed about how the government wasn’t doing enough to clean up their neighborhoods and rebuild their homes.

As though it were the government’s responsibility to rebuild private residences and businesses after a natural disaster.

Now saying these things will probably get Newt, and people like me who think as Newt does, labeled “racist.” But that’s just something liberals do when you dare criticize one of the victim groups they’ve created and pander to.  But in reality this criticism has nothing to do with race.  The same argument can be applied to white farmers who are told that they can’t succeed without endless government subsidies, or minority groups in general (like women or Hispanics, etc.) who are told that they can’t get ahead in college or in the business world unless their “majority” peers are working at a disadvantage through affirmative action programs.  These people to depend on the government instead of themselves, which then causes disaster when the government is inefficient in providing the services it promises (which it almost always is).

The way to fix this is to promote policies in this country that use government power not to take care of people but rather to facilitate the ability of people to take care of themselves.