Two visions of America are clashing in parts of the country that were ravaged by Hurricane Helene. One is voluntary, Tocquevillian, and community-based, with animated private relief efforts. The other, led by FEMA, relies on the government.
Republicans hold up voluntarism as the best way to do things collectively. Those on the Left insist that the government is not only the best option but should often be the only option. Even our religious divide is reflected in this clash. The private relief effort is guided not only by Americans’ predilection for little platoons but often also by faith.
Samaritan’s Purse, one of the leading private relief outfits conducting heroic efforts in North Carolina and Georgia, proudly displays on its website a quote from Rev. Franklin Graham that says, “We’re thankful that we can respond and help in Jesus’ Name.”
The government, for its part, insists on being secular.
The problem is the government is also infamously slow, often corrupt, and run by red-taped bureaucrats and politicians who prioritize the wrong things. It took five days after Helene’s devastation began in North Carolina before a vacationing President Joe Biden mobilized the military. It doesn’t help, either, that the press — the watchdog our system of government has traditionally relied upon — has defanged itself. The government is being reported on by a national media that has taken its side and will not hold its feet to the fire.
A legacy media in the tank for the Democrats this election season is, for example, smearing as “misinformation” all clear evidence that the administration and FEMA were woefully slow in their response to the tragedy and that FEMA now lacks funds despite spending billions of dollars on illegal immigrants and the border crisis. Conservative radio host Erick Erickson, a Georgia resident whom I’ve known for years, has noted that the real scandal is the initial government inaction and media obeisance.
“If the victims of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina were black and the President was a Republican, national media reporters would be covering the government’s incompetent response with the epistemic vitriol they did following Katrina,” Erickson said in his newsletter.
Instead, we’re getting dribs and drabs from non-media sources that can still be quite accurate. In one of the LISTSERVs I belong to, which includes members of small-town America, folks described, in granular detail, how neighbors helped neighbors, towns rallied, and private helicopter pilots shuttled supplies to the needy at the height of the tragedy.
In other words, America showed up. Volunteerism is a unique feature of American life and is as old as the republic. In 1840, the French nobleman Alexis de Tocqueville was so impressed by this trait that he remarked upon it again and again in Democracy in America.
There are also persistent reports that FEMA is interfering in this private effort or outright blocking it, though these are harder to confirm. In one of the most publicized instances, one famous private actor, Elon Musk, complained that FEMA was blocking equipment from his SpaceX company that would enable satellite internet in areas that are blacked out. Musk posted a message from a SpaceX engineer in Asheville, North Carolina, telling Musk that the company had deployed more than 300 ground-based Starlink devices that link with satellites to provide internet services, and “it has saved many lives.”
FEMA, however, “is actively blocking shipments and seizing goods and services locally and locking them away to state they are their own. It’s very real and scary how much they have taken control to stop people helping.”
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg jumped in on X at that point and posted, “No one is shutting down the airspace and FAA doesn’t block legitimate rescue and recovery flights. If you’re encountering a problem give me a call.”
However, the Daily Signal‘s Tim Kennedy, who’s down there, said, “Helicopters with Wings of Hope and Operation Airdrop, based in Hendersonville, were blocked initially by FEMA from airdropping supplies close to Black Mountain last Friday. Pilots have not been back since out of fear of getting in trouble with federal authorities.”
Another problem that puts the trouble with government in relief is that FEMA has run out of money, according to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. This is inexplicable to many critics. Not only does the Biden administration spend money willy-nilly, including sending billions of dollars to Lebanon, but FEMA itself has been wasting money on illegal aliens crossing the border. This led to another exchange in which NBC News’s Kristen Welker smarmily complained about “misinformation” to a critic, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark).
“Do you think this is a time to put falsehoods aside, like the idea that FEMA funds are being redirected to migrants, which is not true?” she asked.
Cotton had none of it, saying, “It is true that FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security have been spending billions of dollars on migrants. … This administration seems to have no problem finding money when they want to spend it on their priorities. When they need 100s of billions of dollars to pay off student loans for graduate students and gender studies programs, they somehow find it. When it’s trying to get helicopters to deliver food and water and cellular service and life-saving medicine into these mountain valleys, they somehow can’t seem to find the money.”
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It is noteworthy that these two approaches should come in such a fateful year when Americans are divided along the same lines on so many other issues.
It’s too bad the press is cheering for the wrong side.
Mike Gonzalez is the Angeles T. Arredondo senior fellow on E Pluribus Unum at the Heritage Foundation and author of NextGen Marxism: What It Is and How to Combat It. Heritage is listed for identification purposes only. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect any institutional position for Heritage or its Board of Trustees.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
