It makes no sense.

And yet the courageous sounding continue with the age-old baptized mantra: "We will come back. We will rebuild."

That is commendable in that it is basically an emotional response to the New Orleans and environs tragedy. But it is not reasonable.

Are we going to rebuild a city that is going to go under again and again and again? The geography was warned over and over in the past by professionals who forecast that the bowl would fill up with flood waters one day. And now that apocalypse has come. We are experiencing the worst disaster in the nation’s history.

Would we rebuild in order to do a return of same in some year yet to be? Would that be fair to the upcoming generations let alone to our own logical present-tense see-throughs?

The whole time I was watching horrific scene by horrific scene, I kept coming to the same conclusion: Let’s not do that bowl thing again. Americans are proud people. They don’t like to be called quitters. They are achievers and go on with the show.

But all that has nothing to do with constructing a city once more in a bowl waiting for overflows. There is no guarantee that any system whatsoever could ward off floodwaters. We American planners always feel we have it safe and down pat. Sometimes we do. Then there are other times when we are proven to have imperfect plans.

The obvious logic in this whole mess is to say forthrightly to one another that we must learn from this not to be foolhardy in putting up another metropolis in the very same location that could be vulnerable to more mayhem in a short time to come? In a long time to come? In some time to come? Whatever, it’s not worth the gamble.

It’s the same toss of the dice in California. It makes no sense to me to build a house on the side of a potential mudslide. People do it. They take pictures of their grand homes and send them all over the place. They brag on their chances. And then calamity hits.

They go back and ask for the same mudslide spill all over again. I say that when they walk into the fan another time, they deserve every shredding they get. It's just not logical, and if Americans pride themselves on anything, it's that they are so downright logical. Not so.

US House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) says the same thing. He told the Daily Herald in a Chicago suburb that "’it doesn’t make sense to me. And it’s a question that certainly we should ask.’" That answer was to the question whether or not New Orleans should be resurrected on the same spot.

As reported by Bill Walsh of The Times-Picayune’s Washington Bureau, Hastert’s remarks followed Congress cutting short its summer break in order to return to DC to tend to emergency business.

As one can imagine, illogical pride rose to the occasion to counter Hastert’s comments. Those in charge from Louisiana scolded Hastert for being so brash, so unfeeling, and so forth and so forth. Illogical pride has a way of getting just a bit too emotional about things important at times.

"’We help replace, we help relieve disaster,’ Hastert said. ‘But I think federal insurance and everything that goes along with it. . .we ought to take a second look at that.’

"Hastert questioned the wisdom of rebuilding a city below sea level that will continue to be in the path of powerful hurricanes."

Now that makes sense.

And when it comes to those in California falling off their cliffs, knowing full well that one of these days or nights the cliffs could give way, don’t give them any moneys by which to build another monster house again on the slip side of existence.

Copyright © 2005 by J. Grant Swank, Jr.