Hurricane Katrina has brought about incredible damage to New Orleans, and serious hardship to other areas.

If you can afford it (and you probably can), now is a great time to consider contributing to the American Red Cross to help with its relief efforts (additional charity suggestions here).

It’s a lot easier to donate money than to do what the many volunteers and workers will be doing for the next few weeks and months.

And, it will help a lot of people.

It’s a terrible situation that I wish wouldn’t have happened. But, I would prefer that it be citable as an instance of a major, successful, voluntary effort to help people in need, rather than as an argument for larger government disaster relief bureaucracies, because private citizens don’t choose to do enough to help.