During the days after Hurricane Katrina, while the country was horrified over the loss of human lives and the dire situation of poor black refugees, Rice went on a shopping spree at Ferragamo on Fifth Avenue for thousands of shoes. “Theater goers in New York City’s Great White Way were shocked to see the President’s former National Security Advisor at the Monty Python farce … as the rest of the cabinet responds to Hurricane Katrina.”

Her explanation was, “I probably had not fully understood that I had also kind of gone into this category of national leader, … that people expected me to be part of the solution for Katrina. I just didn’t get it, frankly.” pp. 266-267.

I am not sure if she is enlightened enough to understand this simple truth — it is not what people expect you to do.  It is what you expect yourself to do and to help as an ordinary human being, from your heart, when you see so many of your people suffer and when you are in the position to help, that is, if you have the heart for the suffering people of yours.  Even my children know to make donations when the earthquake hit Sichuan, China. Her lack of sympathy for her people in Katrina disaster is beyond my comprehension.

It shocks me to read about her attitude toward those underprivileged.  Rice talked about welfare recipients “taking advantage of the government and that they need to pull themselves up on their own.” Rice knows most of those welfare recipients are African Americans like herself.  One of her former colleague at Stanford commented on her, “That woman has a hard streak in her.” p. 107

The hard streak in her is the defect in her education — single-minded focus on success while lacking of cultivation in humanities field, the care of soul and mind, which result in her inability of understanding and empathy to think and feel how others do.  I would think this is a lesson for all parents who want their children to be full social beings, capable of both thinking and feeling.