There are now two main ways of looking at government in the United States. The conservative way is to see people as basically bad and in need of correction by a government set up just for that. The progressive way is to see most people as good and setting up a government to make life even better.
It was the conservative perspective that led the federal government to respond to Katrina and Rita by sending in troops. They expected a need to "contain" the mayhem that would result from local government being disrupted by the flood.
But the people of Louisiana and Alabama and Mississippi proved them wrong. The only mayhem was committed by those who were supposed to help--something we might have expected if we'd remembered that the conservative prejudice is just an excuse for a small number of people taking advantage of everyone else.
And that's the lesson of Katrina that we mustn't forget--not in November and not later.
Democrats.org has a post called "From the Lower 9th Ward" that's worth checking out...
I'm sitting on a bus with 28 other volunteers -- a combination of DNC members, officers and staffers. We just spent two hours in New Orlean's lower 9th ward gutting a house that had been overcome with mold in the seven months since Katrina hit.