Over time, most colonies moved beyond the stage where lax morals were the norm, but New Orleans never lost its reputation for lose morals. Most successful colonies in the New World moved through several stages of development. Like most European colonial outposts, Louisiana was a frontier where standards of morality differed sharply from those in the mother country.
Why this reluctance on the part of the nation to rebuild a major city destroyed not by the effects of the hurricane, but by the design and construction flaws of its man-made levee system? Part of the answer to that question lies in the city’s reputation for immorality and corruption, a view of the city that first emerged in the colonial period. Governor Landrieu said that he thought it would be a year before we knew if the city would be rebuilt, and he gave it only a 50-50 chance. 1In a recently televised debate between Ray Nagin and Mitch Landrieu, candidates for mayor of New Orleans, Chris Matthews, a national news anchor on MSNBC, asked, “Why should a guy working in this country, a woman working in this country, pay for somebody to build or rebuild a house below sea level down here in New Orleans?" 1 It is a question that has been posed by a wide range of individuals since Hurricane Katrina devastated the city.
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