[Woodmonkey]

These parts of the article leaped out at me.

Engle feels that the evil rich "kept out the poor" from their high-and-dry gated communities. Sorry, Sam, the poor weren't "kept out" of those gated communities; they just failed to make the decisions in life that would have gained them access. The rich did nothing to them. They did it to themselves.

Some people don't want to acknowledge that most of the well off and wealthy are that because of the choices they made in their lives. It was not given to them, they earned it. There are few families, like the Kennedys, where they are born into wealth some one else worked for.

People have a right to live in a gated community if they can afford it. Some choose that for security and safety reasons. I'm not wealthy, but did look at things like flooding when I went to buy a house years ago. I passed up a gorgeous house on a creek that regularly turns into a river flooding homes built along it because I didn't want to deal with that. Does that mean I'm immoral?

It wasn't the evil rich who decided that the poor would ignore the educational opportunities available to all in America, rich and poor alike. Rich people don't teach poor young blacks that learning is a "white thing." It wasn't some rich family living in their gated community that decided that a poor woman was going to have a child she could not afford to raise at 18, then another at 20 and a third at 21. It wasn't "monied America" that made the choice for the poor that living on the taxpayer's teat was a far more desirable way of life than developing a work ethic and putting it to use in our opportunity-rich free market economy.

All of this is true. It applies equally to the whites on welfare who, if I remember correctly, make up 80% of those on the dole.

Also, Ms. Engle, can you tell us just how those wicked rich people managed to "concentrate(d) the crime in the poor neighborhoods"? Is it because they take precautions to keep the crime out of their neighborhoods? Well, excuse the hell out of them! How dare they sit there in their fancy homes and not accept willingly their fair share of crime? Maybe we need some new kind of bussing program. That can be your next letter to the editor, Ms. Engle; a demand that some court order the bussing of petty thieves, burglars, rapists and murderers to gated communities so that the rich can enjoy the benefits of the culture of predatory crime together with the poor. The culture of the law-abiding should be forced to mingle with the culture of the lawless, don't you think? Isn't that part and parcel of the liberal mantra of multiculturalism?

He raises some excellent points.

2And now, Ms. Engle, I need to take the gloves off for a moment, you supercilious jerk. How dare you say that "you left them, to die in attics and on rooftops and in the streets and in the disgusting halls of commerce and sports?" ... "Left them to die?" What in the hell are you talking about? When police and firefighters, the fantastic first-responders we all rely on, went in to rescue the stranded they were fired on by roving gangs of thugs from the poor neighborhoods you so love - and this started happening on day one. Nurses and doctors (who very well may have lived in gated communities) stayed on duty in their hospitals moving their patients to ever-high floors as the looters and predators worked their way up from below. Helicopters trying to evacuate patients from hospitals and from the Super Dome were fired upon. Left them to die? These people were risking death to rescue the poor, and you write that the poor were left to die?

The dumbass mayor left them to die. There were other city councilmen (or whatever they call them down there) and what did they do, or not do? We don't hear about them. What about the Parish/County leadership? The County I live in is involved with disaster planning/prevention and has been all along. What did they do, or not do? Then we come to the governor. We all know that the first 24 hours she and her advisors talked about whether they should accept Bush's offer ... or not because she didn't want to lose control.