Kerby Anderson

Even a devastating hurricane can provide some positive lessons. News outlets and commentators have been pointing to so many great “feel good” stories of people who stepped up to save people from the floodwaters and to provide for them once they were rescued. At least for a short period of time, the racial divisions were set aside as people from different ethnic backgrounds stepped up to help people of various ethnic backgrounds. We didn’t know if the people doing the rescuing or the people being rescued voted for or against Donald Trump. We didn’t know if they were Republican, Democrat, or Independent. We saw a better side of a divided country. We also saw in this hurricane and flood that some of the politically correct ideas flew right out the window. Ben Shapiro reminded us in one column that in a crisis, “men are no longer toxic, women protect children, and children are innocent.” He used one of the iconic pictures from the flood to illustrate his point. It was a picture of a man in a baseball cap carrying a woman through the water. The woman, in turn, is holding a baby curled up on her chest. Feminists argue that manhood is toxic and that manhood no longer has meaning. Women don’t need protectors, they say. Well, when the floods came, I am sure many women were glad that men were willing to step up, to be strong, and to be masculine. In the crisis, women were guarding their children. But we are told by our culture that women should be out in the workplace and not define themselves as mothers and homemakers. The mother in the picture was protecting her child, as she was supposed to do. Finally, we are told that children cannot be innocent but must become sophisticated enough to make major decisions. They should be able to decide their standards of education, their standards of morality, and even their sexual standards. In fact, they should be able to decide their own sex. I think that Hurricane Harvey helped clarify some of the false cultural teachings of society.