Not waiting for nanny government to come to the rescue.
Via NRO:
It’s not easy to burn a straw man in the midst of a biblical flood, but some on the Left are frantically trying to light the flame. The target, of course, is Texas conservatism, and the argument is old and tired. Whenever disaster strikes red America, there’s always someone standing there ready to say, “What do you think of big government now?”[…]
Where to begin? First, it’s extremely odd to argue that Texas may lose its sense of self-reliance when the crisis’s most enduring images are of the extraordinary response of private individuals: people manning their own boats, rescuing their friends and neighbors without waiting for government help. No one should minimize the indispensable role of government first responders, but the Harvey rescues represented a maximum public and private effort.
Further, the modern demand for limited government isn’t a demand for no government, and the quest to, say, rein in entitlements, limit the reach of regulations, or eliminate government waste is in no way inconsistent with the belief that the government can and should respond to natural disasters. Even outright libertarians see a role for the government in emergency relief, and the stingiest proposed Republican state or federal budgets still fund a vast government apparatus for the purpose.
Parker makes the tired and discredited argument that Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz voted against Hurricane Sandy relief, when they loudly and clearly argued at the time that they were in favor of Sandy relief but opposed to larding up the bill with unrelated or non-emergency expenses. The issue was pork and waste, not the government’s role in a time of crisis.