Where are the missing leaders?

While many criticize city, state an federal leadership in the New Orleans crisis, my question is where were the leaders among the victims? I received an email from my brother describing the 1970's flooding of the Brisbane River and the subsequent actions of leaders and victims. It describes leaders within and help from neighboring people. It ends with "Citizens who, at the first sign of trouble, stand around bewildered. You see it on the news. Faces screaming, 'Help me!', 'Tell me what to do!' "

What has happened when people cannot take leadership in dire circumstances? Why could not the victims band together as a community and watch each other's backs instead of standing by while looting and rapes occurred?

How would these people have acted if there was no sense of a government agency stepping in? How does the knowledge that some agency is coming to help change how people make decisions? Instead you have the people just taking up residence in the Superdome and Convention Center waiting for help to arrive. You have the mayor instead of using available resources to evacuate or help afterward waiting for state help to arrive. You have the state waiting for FEMA to arrive. FEMA has always been a red taped, bureaucratic federal agency that cannot move quickly in most disasters, much less one like this where there is mass flooding. To stand around waiting on FEMA is foolish and irresponsible.

If these people had a mindset that nobody was coming to help, most would have stirred themselves to action to save themselves and their families instead of waiting. The legacy of a bloated government is created dependency. Liberals either want the masses dependent or they cannot grasp the disservice they do to their fellow man when they rob them of the opportunity to help themself. This does not mean society or the government should not help. Just that the help given should not be seductively addicting.