There's some other good diaries out there about Bob Jindals response to Obama's excellent speech tonight. But I just want to touch on 3 simple points about Bobby's little story about the Sherrif and Katrina. The moral of the story was supposed to be that government can't help.
Today in Washington, some are promising that government will rescue us from the economic storms raging all around us.
Those of us who lived through Hurricane Katrina, we have our doubts.
Let me tell you a story.
During Katrina, I visited Sheriff Harry Lee, a Democrat and a good friend of mine. When I walked into his makeshift office I’d never seen him so angry. He was yelling into the phone: ‘Well, I’m the Sheriff and if you don’t like it you can come and arrest me!’ I asked him: ‘Sheriff, what’s got you so mad?’ He told me that he had put out a call for volunteers to come with their boats to rescue people who were trapped on their rooftops by the floodwaters. The boats were all lined up ready to go - when some bureaucrat showed up and told them they couldn’t go out on the water unless they had proof of insurance and registration. I told him, ‘Sheriff, that’s ridiculous.’ And before I knew it, he was yelling into the phone: ‘Congressman Jindal is here, and he says you can come and arrest him too!’ Harry just told the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and start rescuing people.
There is a lesson in this experience: The strength of America is not found in our government. It is found in the compassionate hearts and enterprising spirit of our citizens
First. The hero of the story is a democrat working to help the people who elected him.
Second. The bureaucrat was most likely a Bush appointee.
Third and most damaging since remember, the whole point of his story is that government wont rescue us....
Remind me again.... Who exactly does a sherrif work for...?
So the real moral of the story is "Don't elect Republicans because the don't want the government to work. Elect Democrats because they will put the government to work for the people who elected them."