New Orleans spent nearly a century under European rule before the United States purchased it. Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, sieur de Bienville, the governor of the French colony of Louisiana, founded the city in 1718. In 1767 it was ceded to Spain. France reclaimed sovereignty in 1800, and three years later Napoleon I sold all of the Louisiana Territory, including New Orleans, to the United States.

From the first years of French rule, slaves labored in New Orleans and its surrounding plantations. In 1721 more black male slaves than free white men lived in the city, and, until the massive European immigration of the 1830s and 1840s, nonwhite residents formed the majority. A large number of slaves arrived in New Orleans between 1719 and 1731, most of them abducted directly from Senegal. The influence of African culture, therefore, was stronger in Louisiana than in the British colonies, whose slave populations often labored in the British West Indies for a generation or two.

Slavery in New Orleans also differed from the English model in other ways. Owners admitted to sexual liaisons with slaves, often taking financial responsibility for their mistresses and offspring. Unlike the English model, in which whites drew a firm line between the two races and considered all people of mixed race to be black, the New Orleans system produced a third caste, that of mixed-race Creoles. (The term Creole has been used to describe a variety of types of people, and in Louisiana it has referred to whites and blacks with French or Spanish ancestry or culture as well as people of mixed race.) Although the French and Spanish governments attempted to limit this propagation of a privileged black Creole class with a series of code noir (black code) laws, citizens frequently ignored the legislation.

Republican lawmakers enfranchised African Americans during Reconstruction (1865-1877) but conservative whites soon voted them out of office. Democrats won power in 1867, intent on \"redeeming\" the state by returning it to the social and political conditions of the pre-war period. White leaders segregated accommodations and schools, and, after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed \"separate but equal\" public facilities, whites pushed for the segregation of public transit. The growing tension led to the New Orleans riot of 1900, which was sparked by an instance of police harassment and marked by rampant violence of whites against blacks. This harassment persisted through the 1950s. After the passage of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, political victories for African Americans became far more common, and New Orleans elected its first black mayor, Ernest \"Dutch\" Morial, in 1978.

These changes in the political sphere reflected the major demographic shift that came with the advent of the suburbs. New Orleans\'s location on the Mississippi River delta had restricted the city\'s growth for 200 years, because most of the surrounding land was swampy. Using modern technology, developers drained marshlands and built new neighborhoods, and white residents moved in as soon as they could. Between 1950 and 1975, the greater metropolitan area doubled in geographic size, and the white population within the city itself declined drastically.

New Orleans lost a good deal of its tax base as whites fled to the suburbs, yet the city did not die the death of many Northern industrial cities. Through the end of the 20th century, the distinctive food, music, and annual Mardi Gras celebration attracted thousands of tourists. The historians Arnold R. Hirsh and Joseph Logsdon contend, \"the delicate cultural amalgam that gave us jazz, a unique cuisine, and a love for public festivals is beleaguered but not yet obliterated.\"

Mother Nature can be cruel, but even at her worst; she is no match for government. It was the glorified public sector, the one we are always told is protecting us that is responsible for this. Although public servants and media present this calamity as an act of nature, it was not and is not. Katrina came and went with far less damage than anyone expected. It was the failure of the public infrastructure and the response to it that brought down civilization.

The levees that failed and caused New Orleans to be flooded, bringing a humanitarian crisis not seen in the US in modern times, were owned and maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers. The original levees surrounding the city below sea level were erected in 1718, and have been variously expanded since. As the New York Times pointed out: \"it was not the water from the sky but the water that broke through the city\'s protective barriers that had changed everything for the worse…. When the levees gave way in some critical spots, streets that were essentially dry in the hours immediately after the hurricane passed were several feet deep in water on Tuesday morning.\"

Indeed, at 4pm on Monday, August 29, all seemed calm, and reports of possible calamity seemed overwrought. There is no question that plenty of time was available between their breakage and the flooding to enable people to make other arrangements-and perhaps for the levees to be repaired. When the disaster struck, the municipal government itself relocated to Baton Rouge even as the city pumps failed as well. Meanwhile, the Army Corp of Engineers had no viable plan to make repairs. They couldn\'t bring in the massive barges and cranes needed because the bridges were down and broken, or couldn\'t be opened without electricity. For public relations purposes, they dumped tons of sand into one breach even as another levee was breaking but even that PR move failed since most helicopters were being used to move people from spot to spot-another classic case of miscalculation.

The levees could have been erected to a greater height. They could have been stronger than they were. The drainage system could have operated more effectively. Here, the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board were at fault. Hurricane Katrina hammered and shattered the Gulf coast. Big Government made it worse.

If the New Orleans levees and pumps were privately owned, they may have been upgraded and fortified to deal with the city’s worsening flood risk. Instead they are owned, maintained, and funded by the city and other government agencies. In typical Big Government fashion, politicians stumbled and delayed leaving New Orleans residents in harm’s way despite clear warnings of danger. Secondly, numerous roads, highways and bridges were washed out, collapsed, or swept away. This made it far more difficult for rescuers to get to the beleaguered city, and refugees to leave. You will never guess who built, operated and maintained these facilities.

It of course cannot be denied that various oil drilling rigs also came unglued, and that these were all private enterprises. One of them even collided with a bridge, greatly damaging it. However, there is a significant difference between the two types of events. The market test of profit and loss applies only to the latter, not to the former. Those oil companies that built their platforms more strongly will tend to grab market share from those that did not. No such regimen operates in the governmental sector. Imagine if the oil drilling rigs were all built by the state. They would have undoubtedly created far more damage.

Now the government owned and operated pumps aren’t - operating. Private oil companies have hundreds of pumps on platforms in hazardous and unstable seas. The North Sea. Caribbean. Atlantic Ocean. Pacific Ocean. Their privately-owned and operated pumps are working pumping billions of gallons of oil every day. Some claimed that upgrading New Orleans levees and pumps would have cost upwards of $10 billion. But that’s an inflated Big Government price. Private enterprise might well do the job better for a fraction of the Big Government estimates.

Big Government destroys the important influence of free market property insurance. As the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) grows bigger, and bails out more and more property owners located in dangerous areas, it undermines the incentive to build smart. A free insurance market would deter unsafe and inadequately insured building construction. Big Government prohibitions also encourage unsafe building construction. It wastes even more money attempting to mitigate damage.. The list of Big Government interventions that undermine personal responsibility, gouge taxpayers, and make disasters worse is long: government ownership of levees, roads, and land. Government granted utility monopolies, government funded stadiums, building codes, permitting processes. Price controls, gambling prohibitions and homeland \"security.\" If it quits preempting this market, more free market solutions will be available - at no cost to the taxpayer.

Dr. Block (Professor of Economics, Loyola University, New Orleans) believes that states take pride in what he calls \"weather socialism\" for during such times, it grabs off almost 50% of the GDP in taxes, and its regulations account for a significant additional amount of wealth not created. If the government left all or even most of the property created by its rightful owners - those who created it in the first place with their own hands - the weather problem could undoubtedly be better addressed by private enterprise. According to him, the government wastes trillions of earnings on subsidizing farmers who ought to be allowed to go bankrupt when they cannot earn an honest profit in this industry. As the number of farmers has declined over the years, the number of bureaucrats in the Department of Agriculture has increased.

The government distributes its citizens’ hard-earned money to people who bear children they cannot afford to feed and a public school system that warehouses and mis-educates children. He decries medical socialism that wastes yet other precious resources besides the Post Office, the Space program, ethanol, war, foreign \"aid,\" and unemployment insurance.

But wait a minute! Is it only the blacks who carried out looting as was shown on TV media? Is it true that there was segregation in the rescuing process? Are blacks this bad?