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From an e-mail I received from a fellow Masonic lodge brother. It's prolly already making the rounds of the net, so don't shoot the messenger:

Dear Community Leaders,

After watching nearly 4 hours of coverage of the terrible disaster on our gulf coast a sad day for America becomes an international looking glass into our strength's and weaknesses in the face of a disaster of epic proportions. As CNN and Fox and other media outlets broadcast these grim images for all the world to see, I find that beyond the obvious sadness one feels for the loss of life and property there was one glaring example of a battle that has raged for eons in our great country. Over the years as America has strived to show the world we are a genuinely kind and caring nation made up of good, decent and peaceable people we display on the worlds television sets an inner demon that we cannot seem to overcome.

As I watched the coverage unfold there was one particular event which I found extremely disturbing in the face of all the suffering and loss. Looting.

Who are we these people that simply decide that it is their turn to dine at the fatted calf? Reel after reel of film showing people casually shopping through the department stores helping themselves to items that will serve no purpose for their survival needs, expensive children's toys, video games and general items of luxury. Strolling along as though they were Christmas shopping on a Sunday afternoon without a care other than how they were going to manage to carry all of their ill gotten gains to their flooded homes. Most didn't even attempt to cover their faces out of fear of being recognized as though if family and friends happened to see them on TV it would be received as a badge of honor. Just incredible, is the only way I could describe what I was watching.

And how did these people plan to explain to their children how they came about the $400 Barbie motorized beach car, or the $1200 wide screen TV, or the Game Boy or any of the other pilfered goods that belonged to someone else up to the time they took possession? My guess, honesty.

Surely any child of age to be able to appreciate these gifts from the flood will be very aware of where they came from and, as behavior is a learned action taught by example, they too will seek their own chair at the table of unearned wealth. And while the looting and theft was just about as bad an example of ethics as there is, there is an even more profound issue at hand. While I am sure there is the odd example here and there throughout the ravaged area of the gulf coast that was decimated by Katrina, I failed to notice on any of the media outlets that were filming on scene, a person of Latin decent, or Asian, or Caucasian or middle eastern background. Of the hundreds of looters proudly displaying their actions only one race was represented. And these people have for years tried to convince societies all over the world that they should be accepted as equals and treated with the same level of respect as those that we didn't see in the Wal-Mart with a shopping cart loaded with other people's merchandise. How dare Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and the other so called leaders of civil rights target those of us who abide by the rules and morality of a decent civilization as unjust bigots. Were they to spend half as much time preaching to their own as they do to me then maybe the media would have had to search elsewhere for some sensational scoop.

How do they expect me to accept with blind faith what I am not blind to? Each generation teaches the next what is right and what is wrong and until one generation decides that enough is enough the world will view the entire race by what they see day in and day out from those that choose to disgrace themselves and their kind. How sad it is indeed that America is populated with a subculture such as this.

Signed, Concerned