Carnuccio: Shining City On A Hill

Free Market Friday: Shining city on a hill

By Michael C. Carnuccio, Guest Columnist

Thursday, May 23, 2013

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams was speaking to Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin earlier this week about the response of Oklahomans to the storms. He observed in awe, “I watched your entire briefing today. You had all heads of state departments including churches, conferences of churches. You have almost a faith-based FEMA here in addition to FEMA. The first thing to learn about Oklahoma often is it’s a very religious state and that comes in critically right now for a lot of these people.”

“If you’re waiting for the government, you’re going to be in for an awful long wait,” his colleague, reporter Harry Smith, would later say. “But the Baptist men, they are going to get it done tomorrow (as they are already delivering food on the street).”

This is what the world sees. This is what millions of people will now attribute to the word Oklahoma. Because when Mother Nature gave us her worst, we gave her our best: teachers and day care workers throwing their bodies over children to shield them from the devastation, college students volunteering, children emptying their piggy banks and corporate citizens championing relief efforts.

If you had a truck, access to supplies or a steady pair of hands, you became a first responder on Monday.

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