Alan Grayson: “Now that help to Haiti is on the way and that we are doing the best we can to save lives and to reconstruct lives in…”

“Now that help to Haiti is on the way and that we are doing the best we can to save lives and to reconstruct lives in that torn country, I think this is a good time to look back and to give some thought to people's reaction to what happened in Haiti, to do sort of a post-mortem of the post-mortem. And particularly I want to revisit one comment that was made after that time, the comment by Pat Robertson. He claimed that the earthquake in Haiti was the result of a pact with the devil that the people of Haiti had made to achieve an end to slavery and independence at the beginning of the 1800s. I thought that was an interesting comment to make. It turns out that there were two devastating earthquakes in Haiti before their independence, before their so-called pact with the devil, before their end to slavery. And in the 200 years plus since their so-called pact with the devil, Haiti has actually been pretty much earthquake-free. Now you compare that to the neighboring country, the Dominican Republic. In 1946, the Dominican Republic had a devastating earthquake, actually, it's hard to believe, ten times more powerful than the earthquake that Haiti experienced 2 weeks ago. The Dominican Republic had no pact with the devil, and therefore, if I can use the word ``therefore'' in this context, was laid low. So under Pat Robertson's logic, one would have to conclude that, in fact, Haiti has benefited tremendously by what he would depict as a pact with the devil.”