Brooks: God & capitalism prevent natural disasters

It's weird how some figures on the right -- Limbaugh, Robertson, Brooks -- have seemed eager to turn this act of God against Haiti into some kind of "See, I told you so"/teachable moment.

It's shades of post-Katrina: instead of, "You only drowned if you deserved it," it's "That building only fell on your head because you didn't fully embrace capitalism."

My prediction is that we'll continue to hear such sanctimonious sermons from The Rich to The Poor whenever a natural disaster strikes a country that is not sufficiently Christian and/or doing its sweaty best to live out the received wisdom of neo-liberal globalist agenda.

Translating David Brooks
By Matt Taibbi
January 18, 2010 | True/Slant

URL: http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2010/01/18/translating-david-brooks-haiti/

Video of our true greatness (not our guns) on display in Haiti

Successful search-and-rescue mission in Haiti brings chants of 'U.S.A., U.S.A.' from the crowd.

This past weekend, a U.S. search-and-rescue team from Los Angeles pulled a woman from the rubble of a collapsed building. The large Haitian crowd assembled outside the scene responded with exuberant cheers of "U.S.A., U.S.A." LA County Fire Capt. Bill Monahan "said it brought his team to tears." The rescue team then proceeded to dig out "three more women from under three stories of another collapsed building." The White House press office sent reporters this video of the scene

URL: http://thinkprogress.org/2010/01/19/haiti-rescue/