Welcome to the American Story. Mostly true stories about what it is that makes America beautiful.

Heartbreaking, funny, inspiring, and endlessly interesting.

This is Chris Flannery with the Claremont Institute.

I call this one, The Man of Steel.

I'm here to fight for truth, justice, and the American way.

These familiar words were spoken by Superman, in the 1978 movie of that title, echoing the narrative

introduction to the 1940s radio series and the 1950s television show. The producers of the movie reportedly thought that the line would draw

a cynical laugh from an audience grown weary by Vietnam, Watergate, and Stagflation.

Instead, there were cheers.

Superman, a man of steel, doesn't say that truth and justice are the American way, but as the audience reaction

suggests, Americans really do want the American way to be true and just. For four score and more years now, from comic books to radio to

television, the big screen, and the worldwide web. The Superman character and

storyline have gone through at least as many changes as the world he lives in.

Multiple universes and Earths have created enough plot curves to confuse an astrophysicist.

But the core of the Superman legend endures.

He came from the planet Krypton as a baby named Kalell, sent by his father in an escape pod just before the planet was

destroyed by a catastrophic explosion. The pod crash landed on Earth near the

tiny town of Smallville, Kansas, where Jonathan and Martha Kent raised

Kalellell as their own, giving him the human name Clark Kent.

His kryptonian abilities, flight, super speed, super strength, x-ray vision, invulnerability,

only became manifest in his teens.

His adoptive family then told him the truth,

...