The automobile represents freedom.
You climb into a car and go, go, go, whenever and wherever you want. The car is modern man’s path to liberty.
Contrast cars with trains.
Railroads are an expression of the collective. Individual identity is erased. You are at the mercy of a state-controlled system that turns citizens into passive cogs, manipulated and at the mercy of government bureaucrats.
That’s why democrats/progressives/liberals/ (what are they calling themselves this week?) are obsessed with high-speed rail. The freedom of the road is repellent to big government fanatics. The ruling elite seek to regulate and control tobacco, food, calories, soda, education, light bulbs, toilets, health care, reproduction — your every cell. In short: liberty is constricted by any and all means.
And all in the name of an amorphous, preadolescent concept: Fairness.
And you better believe that the chattering elite are the ones who get to define what’s fair and what’s unfair. Funny how that always works out in their favor.
Nazis just adored trains. And hey, the Italian fascists boasted that Mussolini made the trains run on time. Though Italian trains were about as effective and efficient as the Italian army. Which is to say: Not.
At a certain point, one must acknowledge the convergent philosophies of post-modern liberals and iron-fist fascists. Both ideologies assert the power of the state as the final arbiter of human affairs. Hence, the government replaces G-d and family as the center of man’s universe. It’s no surprise that the formal title of the Nazi party was “The National Socialist German Workers’ Party.”
Anyhoo.
Today, Hollywood celebrities make sure to be seen driving a Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf, or any of the politically correct green cars. It is something of an open secret here among my Hollywood colleagues that the garage is fully stocked with a Mercedes, a Bentley, and sure, a few Jags. For real driving.
But once upon a time Hollywood produced great stars who proudly posed with their autos, symbols of glamour, affluence, and freedom.
Shameless plug: My eBook, How I Married Karen has been published to Amazon’s Kindle store and is available here. My book is a fantastic gift. It’s G rated, no shmutz. Young, old, and everyone in between will enjoy this story of my perfect imperfection.
Here’s the blurb:
Emmy Award winning screenwriter Robert J. Avrech fell hopelessly and helplessly in love with Karen when they were fourth-grade classmates in the Yeshivah of Flatbush. In this true life story, an unorthodox Orthodox memoir, Robert details an all-consuming love that struck at age nine and was never forsaken. In a style that recalls screwball comedies of the 1930s, and in chapters inspired by classic movies, Robert vividly relives — with Karen providing wise and witty commentary — an unlikely romance that is touching, hilarious and ultimately inspirational.
If you like Seraphic Secret, I guarantee you are going to love How I Married Karen.
Seraphic Secret said:
“Brendel’s signature line was: “Yumpin’ yiminy!” He is something of an acquired taste, which Seraphic Secret has never acquired.”
I remember that guy … LOL!
Note that “progressives” who are obsessed with passenger rail rarely have any interest in *freight* rail, without which we would all soon be freezing and starving in the dark. Mention to them that a higher % of freight moves by rail in the US than in Europe and they look at you unbelievingly.
My plane-phobic husband and youngest daughter traveled across the country by train in 2002. They were delayed two hours on the trip west, and ten on the trip east. At one point they were sitting on a side spur near Salt Lake City, waiting for a replacement crew because the current ones had hit the limit on hours-on-duty. Same thing happened in Indiana at 2 a.m. (when was the last time your pilot left the plane at 30,000 feet and you sat waiting for his replacement to show up?). The final leg of their journey, a 90 mile trip from Erie to Buffalo, took almost four hours. I told the station master they could almost have WALKED faster than that. For most of the eastward journey there was no air conditioning in the cars, the snack bar never opened, and Amtrak employees literally ran the opposite way when they saw passengers coming.
The other freedom a car gives you is the ability to get to your family quickly in time of crisis. I was working in Philly once and my daughter had an emergency at school. I’d been taking the regional rail in to work, so I ran to the train station to catch the next one to go to her–but the next one wasn’t leaving for an hour and a half. I ended up taking the subway, walking six blocks, then taking two buses. Once the emergency was over, I still had to go get the car, a journey that involved two more buses, a mile walk, and then finally I gave up and got a cab. After that, I drove to work every day. I figured my peace of mind was worth the extra gas and $10 parking fee.
Imagine it’s 1913. The country is crisscrossed with ribbons of unbroken real estate for train tracks and it takes a week to go from New York to Los Angeles.
Someone says “Wouldn’t it be great if we could use that thing the Wright Brothers got off the ground to travel around in instead of building more train tracks?”
So today we have the ability to travel across the country in mere hours and only need a patch of land at both ends. Our visitors from 1913 would think we’re uts to want to go back to trains.
Henry Ford was lionized as the man that gave the common man the freedom to travel where he wanted. Those on the left would like us to get rid of our cars and use trains and light rail to get around. Cars and guns are preventing us from being more like those Europeans they admire.
Of course, their bodyguards will still carry guns as they are chauffeured to the airport for a trip on their private jet.
With a train, too, you can’t deviate from the track
Well, that’s the point. Toe the line! No nasty deviations allowed!