Apr 29, 2011
IBD

Disaster: If the nation’s political and cultural elites believe they’re presiding over a shrinking country, they should connect with the Americans now sorting through tornado rubble looking for their old, self-reliant selves.

They do it so grimly, determinedly. They know, because they live their country’s history even more inwardly than faraway commentators, that what they once created they will build again.

Some 300 residents of six Southeastern states perished last week in what may be the worst meteorological destruction in eight decades. In recent memory it is the worst since Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans six years ago.

And no unpopular president or inept emergency system could be blamed. Atmospheric disturbances that spin off monster tornadoes favor no political persuasion; they mock human pretension.

In storm-ravaged Tuscaloosa, President Obama was right to join with Republican state leaders and call attention to “the American spirit.” This is the home of the University of Alabama and the football-power Crimson Tide. There will be no defeatism.

Those faraway commentators exhibit two predictable reflexes. The first is to invoke Al Gore’s scaremongering and wonder aloud if man-made “climate change” visited this destruction on us. Science’s firm verdict: No. The second is the smiley-faced notion that rebuilding will boost the economy by creating jobs, an economic fallacy.

Make no mistake: Tornado Alley last week delivered immeasurable loss. The wealth lost could have been invested, were there no such destruction, in further social advancement. And emergency funds delivered to the neediest sites were transferred from somewhere else, not produced.

Economics aside, it’s true that natural disasters seal the affections of the stricken and rally communities. The American spirit will overcome even this.

Meanwhile, with exquisitely bad timing for a popular culture shot through with faux cosmopolitanism, the people who publish Superman comics have decided the Man of Steel will renounce his U.S. citizenship.

Here’s news: The people with the real superpowers are those rising from the rubble determined to rebuild. The American spirit may be departing a phantom icon just as those left in the path of nature’s destruction reclaim it.

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