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February 8, 2013
Why Liberals Love Trains
Generations hence, when the river of time has worn this presidency’s importance to a small, smooth pebble in the stream of history, people will still marvel that its defining trait was a mania for high-speed rail projects. This disorder illuminates the progressive mind.... So why is America’s “win the future” administration so fixated on railroads, a technology that was the future two centuries ago? Because progressivism’s aim is the modification of (other people’s) behavior. -- George Will @ The Daily Beast
Posted by gerardvanderleun at February 8, 2013 12:20 PM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.
Your Say
Liberals hate the Taggart Transcontinental railroad.
Posted by: Potsie at February 8, 2013 1:48 PM
Two years ago, I explained that "High Speed Rail is not about transportation. It's about government."
Riders on a train need not be considered as individuals. They are collectively the masses. There few things that give the Left more salivating joy than the prospect of the masses moving together as one under government control, according to government schedules, to and from government-selected terminals, at government-set speeds, with their on-board activities strictly controlled (no smoking, etc.). While aboard the train, the rider-masses are more completely, physically under the government thumb than they'll ever be the rest of the day. And that is a true dream of the Left.
As the Denver Post's David Harsanyi put it, "Progressivism is the belief that we have too much freedom with which to make too many stupid choices."
Posted by: Donald Sensing at February 8, 2013 3:11 PM
Because progressivism’s aim is the modification of (other people’s) behavior.
FINALLY somebody's getting it.
Posted by: Rob De Witt at February 8, 2013 3:23 PM
Answer to obvious question: because they can, and it's fun, and it gets you laid.
Posted by: sherlock at February 8, 2013 3:28 PM
I think self-driving cars are going to replace any interest in passenger trains whatsoever, globally.
Posted by: Christopher Taylor at February 8, 2013 4:51 PM
High speed rails are need to transfer the masses to the reeducation camps. You can't stuff enough bitter clinkers of the vast right wing conspiracy into a minivan.
Posted by: Jewel at February 8, 2013 6:18 PM
Liberal love railroads because the railroad workers are easy to unionize. Once unionized they must kick part of their salaries back to the Party. They can get arbitrary raises by threatening to strike at vital times. It is a shakedown racket.
Posted by: Fat Man at February 8, 2013 7:13 PM
When I'm back in the States, I frequently drive on stretches of that I-4 corridor between Orlando and Tampa. As Mr. Will noted, they're on crack if they think 30 million people per year are going to use the train along this route. The population density, even adding in the Orlando tourists, simply isn't there. Gov. Scott was right to refuse that money-wasting project.
I've ridden trains in the US, Germany, Italy, Japan, Australia, and Turkey, and when they go where I want, when I want, for the price I want, I'll hop on board. Otherwise, I'll fly or drive. To me, a train is just another way of getting somewhere. When it becomes a money-sucking fetish, like in this administration, then something else is going on besides transportation.
Posted by: waltj at February 8, 2013 8:12 PM
Leftists (there are no liberals) love trains because they imagine THEY can make them run on time.
M
Posted by: Mark Alger at February 9, 2013 9:00 AM