Rebirth or starting over is intrinsically American. We are die-hard optimists – it is what makes this country great. Unfortunately today we are living in a culture of distrust which is buoyed by that same optimism, irrational though it may be at times. Pride is in a battle against practicality, although 56% said they did not think all of New Orleans should be rebuilt to its old levels. Mayor Ray Nagin’s hubris proposes to reoccupy the same footprint the city had before the storm. As of right now, the Corps of Engineers plans to spend $6 billion (!) to make sure that by 2010, the city will probably be flooded only once every 100 years.

The majority of New Orleanians realize they should not depend on the federal government to do everything for them. Historically, that is anathema to the American way. When you put your fate completely in someone else’s hands, you can expect to be disappointed. In the case of New Orleans, we cannot overlook the city’s history of graft and corruption, which hindered the response to the storm too. It was a broken city that was all of a sudden called upon to rise to the occasion. Human nature being what it is, there will be some who will want to pass the buck, but you see stories on television and in newspapers all the time of those who came back with a hammer and shovel and started rebuilding for themselves. The colonists wanted to change their fate, so they took their lives into their own hands and did something. They took control, even though the unknown might be frightening and the future ahead rife with potholes.

What makes us at core Americans is our can-do attitude with a small dose of realism and a big dose of fire-in-the-belly. We are a nation of big and little entrepreneurs, making our own futures. It would behoove the powers that be in New Orleans and Louisiana to remember that. There is enough high ground in New Orleans for the city to relocate the entire population, focusing on what works, rather than what hadn’t been working for a long time. Colonists tried to start a new life and didn’t trade on their victim hood. No doubt they were nostalgic for their past, just as New Orleans is, but they didn’t fool themselves into wanting the parts that hadn’t served them well. Likewise New Orleans should stop looking at its old ghettoes and corrupt system through rose-colored glasses and take this opportunity for a fresh start. That same American optimism can also be self-delusional: we like to think we are invincible – “it won’t happen to me,” and are surprised when it does. Dignity has its place and rebuilding or starting over is a point of pride not to be diminished, but resolutions to problems need not be suicidal. The federal government should not be in the business of helping New Orleans go over the cliff again by helping them rebuild where they shouldn’t and rescuing them again when things go wrong. A federal system like ours has never been built to respond to massive disasters because our Founding Fathers’ framework was self-reliance.