Why not shoot em all and let God sort em out?

Mary Mother of God, this is the first thing that comes to Peggy Noonan's fucked up brain.

As for the tragic piggism that is taking place on the streets of New Orleans, it is not unbelievable but it is unforgivable, and I hope the looters are shot. A hurricane cannot rob a great city of its spirit, but a vicious citizenry can. A bad time with Mother Nature can leave you digging out for a long time, but a bad turn in human behavior frays and tears all the ties that truly bind human being--trust, confidence, mutual regard, belief in the essential goodness of one's fellow citizens.

She goes on to make the distinction that taking food is ok, but who's going to sort that out? Should the cops stop the guy who just walked out of Wal Mart and check whether he's stolen duct tape or a CD player?

Or should the cop just shoot him anyway?

Wait there's more from the High Priestess of our Great National Exceptionalism.

We had a bad time in the 1960s, and in the New York blackout in the '70s, and in the Los Angeles riots in the '90s. But the whole story of our last national crisis, 9/11, was courage--among the passersby, among the firemen, among those who walked down there stairs slowly to help a less able colleague, among those who fought their way past the flames in the Pentagon to get people out. And it gave us quite a sense of who we are as a people. It gave us a lot of renewed pride.

If New Orleans damages that sense, it's going to be painful to face. It's going to be damaging to the national spirit. More damaging even than a hurricane, even than the worst in decades.

You know what is damaging to the national spirit? Seeing bodies in the streets of one of our largest cities, left to lay untended for days.

But that's unimportant to her. What's important is that the people of New Orleans show the rest of the world the stuff we Americans are made of! What's important is that President Bush show leadership. Rather than actually lead.

Tragic piggism. Pretty much sums up the Nooner.

Via Hullabaloo and Media Matters.