Hello All,
Another well written article by Lew Rockwell demonstrating how Central Planning
kills.
This time with Emergency Central Planning.
The best quote from this piece is listed below:
"At some point in the coming years, you will probably face this problem. There
will be some emergency in which you will be told to put your life or that of
your children in the hands of experts, who pretend as if they know what is best
for you. Chances are that they don't, and this emergency will be the time when
you need to think seriously about fundamental values. Is obedience to authority
more important than life itself?"
Is obedience to authority more important than life itself? Unfortunately so for
far too many Americans......
Vic
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Death by Emergency Plan
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
DIGG THIS
A strange culture of emergency has taken over this country, and the
slightest provocation triggers it. It could be an expected terrorist or just an
old-fashioned weather warning. The officials are quick to swing into action,
and tell you what to do.
The problem is that these demands are often based on nothing other
than government plans that are not in your best interest. It behooves all of us
to think carefully about genuine preparedness, which might often involve
bucking the system and telling the emergency nazis to mind their own business.
A case in point is the disastrous weather emergency that befell
Enterprise, Alabama, last week. The first warnings about a tornado came at
10:30am, and that's when the disastrous "preparations" began. The school could
have permitted the students to leave. After all, we are talking about a high
school here, and most students could drive. Those who couldn't might have
gotten a ride. Parents would have been glad to pick up their kids, and many
tried but were turned away.
At least some choice in the matter should have been allowed. But,
if you know anything about disaster plans, you know that choice and human
rights are the last things on the decision-makers' minds. They treat people
like cattle to be herded, bark orders, and threaten everyone in the most awful
way for having the most normal impulses to seek a safe way out.
So instead of just letting the kids go, the officials herded them
all in hallways, where it was said that they would be "safe." There they sat in
crowded conditions for hours and hours, just waiting for the moment of death to
come. It finally did: at 1:30pm. The twister slammed into the building, the
walls caved in, and eight kids were killed, with many more injured. Parents who
had come to pick up their kids at the earliest possible moment (the school
announced that this was 1:00pm) sat helplessly by. They weren't allowed in
before, and when they showed up, the police demanded that they come inside and
still wouldn't let the kids go.
And did the officials in charge express regret about their stupid
decision to force everyone to stay? On the contrary, they claim that if they
had let the kids go, there might have been hundreds of deaths.
First, we don't know that for sure. The main spot of death was the
school, and it was precisely because so many were crowded into just a small
area. A point of common sense - very much lacking in emergency management - is
that wherever you are hiding, you need room to move so that you can dodge
falling concrete. They were given no such room.
Second, there is a big difference between dying at the hands of the
plan and dying because of your own bad choices. It is a matter of who bears the
responsibility. When you die because of the decisions of the officials, your
blood is on their hands.
And this brings us to the second response of the officials, and
this applies to the school, the local police, and all the way up to the
governor. Instead of expressing regret, they congratulated each other for
adhering so closely to the plan, and for following through with the emergency
preparedness. Yes, they are sorry people died, but for the emergency
bureaucrat, the far more important consideration is that everyone obeyed orders
and that the orders were clear and decisive.
Yes, some parents have spoken out against the decision of the
school to keep the kids corralled in a trap of death. But their complaints have
been shot down by the "responsible" voices of the officials in charge.
Meanwhile, news has slowly leaked out that other schools in Alabama have a
different policy: they shut down the school and tell the kids to get the heck
out.
This is an unusual approach. The whole culture of emergency in this
country seems to be predicated on the notion that people do not know what is
best for them. They need authorities to tell them what to do. And whatever they
do, they must do it in concert. Masses of people must be shuffled this way and
that, and no one should be permitted to have any choice in the matter.
Why do we assume that the officials in charge know what is better
for us than we do? It is a leap of faith. After all, everyone has access to the
weather channel. Everyone can watch the radar. We don't need nazis-on-the-spot
to suddenly pop up and manage our choices on whether to evacuate or stay, to
hunker down where we are or find some other spot.
The best approach to an emergency is simply to let people make
their own judgments about how to stay safe. Instead, we have developed a system
whereby a central plan goes into effect that applies to everyone. This is why
evacuations tend to be mandatory these days, and why you are not allowed to
rescue your own children from danger.
This brings us to the final presupposition of emergency management
in this country: officials assume that you are their property. You have no
rights, no freedom of choice, and no volition of your own that should be
respected. Your one job is to obey them, and at least if you are killed, they
can have bragging rights that they got everyone to go along.
At some point in the coming years, you will probably face this
problem. There will be some emergency in which you will be told to put your
life or that of your children in the hands of experts, who pretend as if they
know what is best for you. Chances are that they don't, and this emergency will
be the time when you need to think seriously about fundamental values. Is
obedience to authority more important than life itself?
March 6, 2007
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. [send him mail] is president of the
Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, editor of LewRockwell.com, and
author of Speaking of Liberty.
Copyright © 2007 LewRockwell.com
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