FEMA, schools, and American Entitlement

In the aftermath of the floods, a New Orleans newspaper published an open letter to Bush vitriolically lambasting FEMA and the administration. It even demanded that every FEMA employee be fired. "No expense should have been spared," the editors stated.

An ER doctor with whom I worked once commented that as much as he supported socialized medicine in theory, in practice it would never work in the US because Americans had a culturally ingrained sense of "entitlement" regarding public services. In other words, nobody would accept having to wait three weeks for a procedure (which is apparently characteristic of socialized medical systems) if they knew their tax dollars were paying for it.

The tone of the paper's open letter strikes me as similiar. Of course the government has the responsibility to protect its citizens and restore order, and the government is doing that as we speak. But is the city entitled to every single resource the government has at its disposal? Does the government has a constitutional obligation to do everything in its power? Or is this just a moral one? The editors sound as if they they think the city's citizens constitutional right to being rescued has somehow been breached.

It is puzzling why we rarely see angry demonstrations of this magnitude regarding other public services such as education and health care that have considerably more economic and social importance than a localized one-time rescue. Where's the sense of entitlement when it comes to the future and health of our citizens on a daily basis?