It could be just a coincidence, that just as Civil Rights were gained under law, the "Great Society," started. Lyndon Johnson's enduring social legacy dramatically expanded the role of welfare started under Franklin Roosevelt. Designed to give a hand-up to those in need, it amplified the wave of government entitlement programs that is cresting today. By providing free housing, food, education, medical care and even discretionary income, these programs created a multi-generation subculture totally dependent on government for its sustenance.

Now in its third, fourth and even fifth generations, members of the "entitlement subculture" are raised to believe this is an acceptable, inescapable, even desirable, permanent lifestyle. They see their parents and grandparents, uncles, aunts, friends, schoolmates and associates all living in public housing, receiving government checks, food stamps, education and medical care.

Members of the Entitlement Subculture participate fully in society in many ways but are excluded in others. They vote. They serve on juries. They consume goods and services. Some join the military if they haven't fallen victim to criminal behavior or drugs in their teens. They are provided with (an alternative to) education in the public schools which borders on criminal neglect.  With this training, dropouts and graduates alike, find it difficult to get or create opportunities for meaningful work. They do not accumulate assets or savings. They live week to week. They contribute a net cost to society, and they change the society in many unsettling ways.

Many of the faces you saw on TV after Katrina gathered around the Superdome and at the Convention Center came from this background. Most of the middle class, black and white, had means and evacuated safely before the storm. Sure some stayed because in any group there are exceptions. Some had commitments they couldn't break. Some were infirm and isolated. Others felt they'd be safe. But so many of the people left behind were those without the means to escape. No money, no credit cards, no car, no experience traveling, nowhere to go. These are barriers that make it hard to suddenly leave town for parts unknown.

Evacuated after Katrina and locked out of the city for eighteen months, why would anyone want to come back to the now abandoned, moldy, dangerous public housing projects like Lafitte, St. Bernard, and St. Thomas? The past residents of those public housing projects do. It's not to hard to see these places were not just home for individuals but for a complete and now threatened society.

The concept of government providing a "hand up, not a hand out" is good rhetoric but it is not working. Government makes it hard to escape the entitlement lifestyle. If you get a job and make too much money you risk being kicked out of your home, losing your income, and destroying your family. By paying broken families more than whole families, the government encourages broken homes. By paying people not to work it encourages idleness.

When the "average" resident of public housing has been there for nine years, the "hand up" isn't working. Hearing a woman's distress about her desire to return to her home of 27 years in public housing, the home in which she was born and where she had her children evokes a whole spectrum of feelings.

Eighteen months after the storm it is hard to understand how so many people are still living in emergency housing in Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, or even the FEMA sponsored Renaissance trailer park in a field near Baker, Louisiana. Why aren't these citizens able to break free and fend for themselves? Are they really just waiting for public housing in New Orleans to be restored so they can return here to resume their dependency? There are so many unintended consequences when government tries to help.