this was not a natural disaster

Make no mistake. When New Orleans appeared out from under Katrina, it was mostly cosmetic damage. Lines down, roof shingles scattered and the normal aftermath of a good sized hurricane. It was annoying but it wasn't a disaster. What happened in the hours AFTER Katrina was a completely man-made catastrophe. It started years ago when people gladly accepted that the government can protect them.

Minarchist libertarians take notice of all this. Government does not keep us protected from the chaos of New Orleans. It's the missing hundreds of thousands of decent citizens that maintained control. The government is STILL operating! Only now you can plainly see it's a paperwork tiger as all government everywhere is. It was only by the mutual understanding of the good people of New Orleans that the city ran. We all live in Anarchy right now. We always have.

How has the government taken care of them besides selling them a weak levee? It stuffed the poor into the lowest parts of the city. It provided them mass transit that in the end could not take them out of harm's way. It prevented good citizens from bringing weapons into the Murderdome to protect themselves. (If the baddies can fabricate weapons in a prison, think of the weapons they can make in the Murderdome.) The people aren't being allowed to leave either. The cops that are left are stopping car thieves on one block while "commandeering" SUVs from citizens attempting to escape on the other. The cops scatter looters from markets only to then "commandeer" the food themselves. Early in the blame game, there are the local politicians that didn't take it upon themselves to ensure that the levees would hold. Further along are the national politicians who shortsightedly sent pork home or to foreign countries instead of spending a few million to make sure the Port of New Orleans would remain operable.

This can spread to any other American city as refugees crowd services elsewhere. The government isn't a thin tissue preventing chaos, it only exaggerates it. In Mississippi where the borders aren't shut down, private citizens have already arrived with ice, water and food. Elsewhere, private citizens have offered their homes and transportation all around the country. It's only by mutual consent that the whole country hasn't erupted into a battlezone in the wake of this national disaster. The government's magical pixie dust works only as long as you believe it does, then you realize it has always been up to you.

Open New Orleans to outsiders and let her people go. Let the free market fix this as rapidly as humanly possible. Let Americans help Americans and tell these bastard politicians to shove off. That's how we'll get New Orleans back in the quickest amount of time. It's the least we can do to truly help.