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Enterprise, Alabama: Death By Emergency Plan
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Twan
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Mar 06, 2007 14:08 PST
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Death by Emergency Plan
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/death-by-emergency.html
(To my friends and loved ones in Alabama: Please be safe! -- Twan )
A strange culture of emergency has taken over this country, and the
slightest provocation triggers it. It could be an expected terrorist or
just an old-fashioned weather warning. The officials are quick to swing
into action, and tell you what to do.
The problem is that these demands are often based on nothing other than
government plans that are not in your best interest. It behooves all of
us to think carefully about genuine preparedness, which might often
involve bucking the system and telling the emergency nazis to mind their
own business.
A case in point is the disastrous weather emergency that befell
Enterprise, Alabama, last week. The first warnings about a tornado came
at 10:30am, and that's when the disastrous "preparations" began. The
school could have permitted the students to leave. After all, we are
talking about a high school here, and most students could drive. Those
who couldn't might have gotten a ride. Parents would have been glad to
pick up their kids, and many tried but were turned away.
At least some choice in the matter should have been allowed. But, if you
know anything about disaster plans, you know that choice and human
rights are the last things on the decision-makers' minds. They treat
people like cattle to be herded, bark orders, and threaten everyone in
the most awful way for having the most normal impulses to seek a safe
way out.
So instead of just letting the kids go, the officials herded them all in
hallways, where it was said that they would be "safe." There they sat in
crowded conditions for hours and hours, just waiting for the moment of
death to come. It finally did: at 1:30pm. The twister slammed into the
building, the walls caved in, and eight kids were killed, with many more
injured. Parents who had come to pick up their kids at the earliest
possible moment (the school announced that this was 1:00pm) sat
helplessly by. They weren't allowed in before, and when they showed up,
the police demanded that they come inside and still wouldn't let the
kids go.
And did the officials in charge express regret about their stupid
decision to force everyone to stay? On the contrary, they claim that if
they had let the kids go, there might have been hundreds of deaths.
First, we don't know that for sure. The main spot of death was the
school, and it was precisely because so many were crowded into just a
small area. A point of common sense – very much lacking in emergency
management – is that wherever you are hiding, you need room to move so
that you can dodge falling concrete. They were given no such room.
Second, there is a big difference between dying at the hands of the plan
and dying because of your own bad choices. It is a matter of who bears
the responsibility. When you die because of the decisions of the
officials, your blood is on their hands.
And this brings us to the second response of the officials, and this
applies to the school, the local police, and all the way up to the
governor. Instead of expressing regret, they congratulated each other
for adhering so closely to the plan, and for following through with the
emergency preparedness. Yes, they are sorry people died, but for the
emergency bureaucrat, the far more important consideration is that
everyone obeyed orders and that the orders were clear and decisive.
Yes, some parents have spoken out against the decision of the school to
keep the kids corralled in a trap of death. But their complaints have
been shot down by the "responsible" voices of the officials in charge.
Meanwhile, news has slowly leaked out that other schools in Alabama have
a different policy: they shut down the school and tell the kids to get
the heck out.
This is an unusual approach. The whole culture of emergency in this
country seems to be predicated on the notion that people do not know
what is best for them. They need authorities to tell them what to do.
And whatever they do, they must do it in concert. Masses of people must
be shuffled this way and that, and no one should be permitted to have
any choice in the matter.
Why do we assume that the officials in charge know what is better for us
than we do? It is a leap of faith. After all, everyone has access to the
weather channel. Everyone can watch the radar. We don't need
nazis-on-the-spot to suddenly pop up and manage our choices on whether
to evacuate or stay, to hunker down where we are or find some other
spot.
The best approach to an emergency is simply to let people make their own
judgments about how to stay safe. Instead, we have developed a system
whereby a central plan goes into effect that applies to everyone. This
is why evacuations tend to be mandatory these days, and why you are not
allowed to rescue your own children from danger.
This brings us to the final presupposition of emergency management in
this country: officials assume that you are their property. You have no
rights, no freedom of choice, and no volition of your own that should be
respected. Your one job is to obey them, and at least if you are killed,
they can have bragging rights that they got everyone to go along.
At some point in the coming years, you will probably face this problem.
There will be some emergency in which you will be told to put your life
or that of your children in the hands of experts, who pretend as if they
know what is best for you. Chances are that they don't, and this
emergency will be the time when you need to think seriously about
fundamental values. Is obedience to authority more important than life
itself?
March 6, 2007
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. is president of the Ludwig von Mises
Institute in Auburn, Alabama, editor of LewRockwell.com, and author of
Speaking of Liberty.
Copyright © 2007 LewRockwell.com
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