EXACTLY. You yourself show that individuals do these behaviors for themselves, for others, because they want to live in a society where people help each other- for all kinds of reasons.

Government force, or threat of force should never be one of those reasons.

It was government brilliance that led to people living below sea level, in an area with no job prospects, in the first place. Do some research on the Wagner Act housing in New Orleans, the levees, and the hurricane losses in dollars and lives before FEMA and Federal Flood Insurance existed.

I applaud your efforts, past and present.

Please understand that I don't believe your efforts create any obligation on me or anybody else to do the same thing, coerced or otherwise. When I give to charity, money or time, I do so because I want to, not because some preacher told me I'll go to heaven, or some bureaucrat will let me deduct it from his plunder.

If you give, hurray for you, just leave me alone and keep your hands out of my pockets.

I did not participate in the immediate NOLA effort but have many years of search-and-rescue (including floods) and disaster relief. I'm a little past my prime for the physical stuff. I have been nuts deep in freezing flood water more than once.

Now that my word processor is my most effective tool, and with my health care experience and reputation, I am going to spend the next two years looking at:

1) how to maintain health care services at the disaster site, during and immediately after

2) how to rebuild health care services

No money involved, just something I want to do for my "community."

There is a difference between collectivism and community, and I want to live in a community (in the local and larger sense), and have no concern we are going to become a bunch of crazed socialists.

PS: Vid, don't pay your income taxes, I'll say something nice about you at your sentencing hearing.

Just another of Martin's canned-answer
facile replies.