Ron Pisaturo's column "The Real Injustice in New Orleans: The Welfare State's Assault on the Productive Individual," would be worth reading if only for his observation that, with environmentalism, we have expanded the welfare state to cover non-humans. Gotta love that.
But there's more:
Political freedom, which still exists in America more than anywhere else, is not designed to end poverty and suffering. A person who does not produce will be—more precisely, deserves to be—poor and miserable no matter what country he lives in and no matter how rich his neighbors are. The difference between a free country and a dictatorship is that in a free country an individual can produce if he so chooses. In a free country, the productive get richer, and the non-productive do not. Americans have the right to pursue happiness, not to have their happiness supplied by others. In short, you get what you earn. To those who reproach America for the 20% who stayed behind in New Orleans, I say: Look at the 80% who used their freedom and self-created knowledge and wealth to leave, unencumbered by others.
....Our Founding Fathers did not fight for freedom just so that their progeny could play tiddlywinks. What we think of today as luxuries did not even exist back then. Freedom is and always will be a matter of survival. If this is news to anyone, he should take a look at countries whose farms are owned by the state.