Vin Suprynowicz: 'The institutionally indolent'

More letters about his original column have come in. Also see this. One of the latest letters contains this:

"The looters you saw on TV were criminals before Katrina. One would have to be a moron not to realize what happens when no fathers are around, and when kids grow up undisciplined and uncivilized. I recall the term 'Liberal Plantation' being used, and believe a book with that title was published some years ago ("It's OK to Leave the Plantation," Clarence Mason Weaver, 1998) and am convinced that the residents you talk about in your column, and the people I saw in the inner city of New Orleans, are, generally speaking, no different when it comes to their mental outlook, than the plantation slaves who waited for the 'Massa' to feed them and clothe them...
"We lived in the Garden District and heard machine gun fire nearly every night. I said back in the early 1990s that martial law should have been declared. If you lived in New Orleans and did not have a weapon to protect your family you were insane. The police were notoriously corrupt and incapable of protecting anyone or anything but their interests in the slot machines, which had just been approved at that time. We used to joke that the sound of a siren meant a slot machine had been disabled somewhere...