Pirate's Cove

That’s the first question asked around the Internet, including at the UK Telegraph

The landscape of parts of Japan looks like the aftermath of World War Two; no industrialised country since then has suffered such a death toll. The one tiny, tiny consolation is the extent to which it shows how humanity can rally round in times of adversity, with heroic British rescue teams joining colleagues from the US and elsewhere to fly out.

And solidarity seems especially strong in Japan itself. Perhaps even more impressive than Japan’s technological power is its social strength, with supermarkets cutting prices and vending machine owners giving out free drinks as people work together to survive. Most noticeably of all, there has been no looting, and I’m not the only one curious about this.

This is quite unusual among human cultures, and it’s unlikely it would be the case in Britain. During the 2007 floods in the West Country abandoned cars were broken into and free packs of bottled water were stolen. There was looting in Chile after the earthquake last year – so much so that troops were sent in; in New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina saw looting on a shocking scale.

Ed West, the writer, poses the question, but, doesn’t attempt to answer it, leaving that for those in the comments. While Japan may be a rather socialist state, their fallback position as a people is calm, order, and respect. They aren’t wards of the state who cannot even attempt to make it out of a city without government’s help and say so. There will be no stories written about Japanese turning cannibal. We won’t have any fake stores about massive rape. We won’t have people screaming for the government to Help Them. Really, there has been little in the way of human interest stories from Japan. Instead, the media is focused on the nuclear reactors, painting everything in the worst possible light.

And then over to ABC News

Overnight and into the grey, chilly morning, long lines formed outside small convenience stores and supermarkets throughout the tsunami-ravaged city of Sendai.

At one, Daiei, the orderly lines had begun 12 hours before the shop opened and stretched for blocks.

As Japanese survivors cope with food and gasoline shortages amidst the aftershocks and rising body count, they draw on a sense of social order. Unlike scenes in natural disasters in Haiti and New Orleans, there is little anger, no looting.

It comes down to that sense of community, to responsibility. While Liberals around the world may talk of community and working together, at its base, Liberalism/Progressivism focuses on the individual, creating a sense of self and entitlement, where everything is about Themselves. When the poop hits the fans, Lefties immediately devolve to worrying solely about themselves, and who’s going to help them. And they want it now! And since their lives are run by their emotions, they quickly get out of hand. This is why things went so poorly in New Orleans, and went well in “Red” states like Alabama and Mississippi.