Federal Money Shouldn't Be Used to Rebuild New Orleans on Same Site

[The following represents my opinion only. I'm not speaking in my official capacity as a pastor.]

One of the running jokes in our household has to do with a geology class my wife took back when we were both students at The Ohio State University.

Geology 100. First minute of the first class session. The professor began, "If you get nothing else out of this class, I hope it's this: Never build your house on a flood plain."

It's good advice, right up there with such gems as, "You don't tug on Superman's cape. You don't spit into the wind."

My guess is that a corollary to that geology prof's proverb would be, "Never build your house near water, below sea level."

Of course, we live in America. Because of that, I support the Constitutionally-guaranteed freedom to be unwise. That is, until your lack of wisdom has an effect on others. It isn't fair to ask the larger society to pay the price for people's mistaken judgments!

• Go ahead and smoke your lungs out. Just don't subject others to your second-hand smoke.
• Ride your Harleys down the highway without a helmet. But don't expect that your health insurance or the public health system will pay for injuries you sustain as a result of that decision.
• And, go on and build your house or your business in New Orleans. Don't ask the federal government to underwrite loans you want to get to rebuild your flood-lost businesses and homes or for new developments. Don't expect a federal statute mandating insurers to cover your unwise choices.

Yet, there are proposals to use federal dollars to rebuild businesses and houses in precisely the same spot of old New Orleans. This one, proposed by a conservative Republican lawmaker from Louisiana, apparently is gaining support from the Washington GOP.

If the good people of New Orleans and Louisiana want to use local and state tax revenues and regulatory authority to try to rebuild their city in the same location as before, well and good. That's their right. But is it fair to the rest of us to be forced to enable their unwise course of action?

[For more, see here, here, and here.]