If you drive down the road you gotta think about America

[ThomWV]

There was not one single inch of Interstate Highway in the United States on the day I was born and I was of voting age before I-95 connected the east coast from north to south. I think the Interstate Highway system did more to change and shape the course and nature of our country than any other domestic project or program ever attempted. It touches all of our lives in a hundred ways every day.

There is nothing that smacks more of socialism than an Interstate Highway. They are paid for from taxes, some use taxes and some revenue taxes. Anyone can use them at any time, no restrictions on which way you are going. It is available equally to commercial and private interests. All major and many minor cities are served and virtually all consumer products use it somewhere in the distribution process. What is most interesting about this socialist intrusion into every aspect of our lives is that as it reach expands prosperity follows. An exit on the Interstate is the ticket to enhanced revenues for many a small community.

And how do we get these marvels of social engineering? Well, private corporations build them and earn from their maintenance but the building of the corridors is decided in a partnership between local, state, and the federal Government.

And where are the complaints about this, what I think is the best example of the people bringing common resources to the common good, this thing that on any inspection an ardent Teabagger would have to call Socialism? Would they have every inch of the system privately owned and tolls charged for its use? Would that be a better thing?

[barbtries]

1. well, eventually they'll

be privatizing the air we breathe, so they might actually answer yes. and they would be wrong, just as wrong as they are about just about everything.

[Possumpoint]

2. President Eisenhower

I was taught that President Eisenhower, after witnessing the advantages of the German Autobahn Systems during WWII, advocated the start of the Interstate HWY system. He foresaw the possible need to move mass amounts of troops quickly across country. He sold the system on the possible benefits to the civilians.