This article from the Manchester Union Leader, a staunchly conservative newspaper from New Hampshire, says more clearly than I ever could the blunders of the current administration in the wake of the hurricane. So I’ll leave that part to them.

I took the picture above in New Orleans in Jackson Square in May of 2001. To me it embodies what the culture of New Orleans is about – the people who make it up.

The thing that overwhelms me about this tragedy — as if there wasn’t so much to overwhelm — is that the greatest loss from this whole thing is the loss of a culture. New Orleans is a culture unique unto itself. It doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world. And in this world of free markets where ANYthing can be a commodity not much remains unexported.

But New Orleans culture, if you ignore the Popeye’s Chicken and “Girls Gone Wild” videos, has had but one distribution network – the home-bound citizens of New Orleans themselves. You have to go THERE to get it.

This hurricane and flood has wiped out all of the things that make the NOLA culture so beautiful. The people, especially those poor who couldn’t evacuate when ordered, ARE the culture of NOLA. They not only are the street dancers and musicians, the cooks and bartenders but they owned the city without ever paying out a dime.

The culture of NOLA is the voodoo shops, the bars, the junk shops, the folk art places. With these places gone, the culture goes with them.

Isn’t it ironic that the people who were left, the poor who couldn’t afford much, but owned the culture that is NOLA, were evacuated to the Super Dome. A stadium their tax dollars paid to build but into which their pennies couldn’t grant them entrance. In the end it was the impending destruction of their culture – their only asset – that guaranteed them a seat.

I will say this to anyone in America who’s reading; we, the people, (not the government) have made a beautiful outpouring of aid to the people of New Orleans. And THIS is a tribute to the culture that this tragedy has cost us all.