Happy 50th anniversary to the Interstate Highway system. I'm probably a little less enthusiastic about it than this guy, a little sadder about some of the small-town flavor of the country that it helped kill off. But there's no question about the ways in which it reshaped this country, and it was Big Government that did it. The federal government has always been a prime mover, so to speak, in this country's transportation development (as perhaps it should have been), from the early roads and its involvement with the railroads to today's highway funding and airport enabling. That's worth remembering in debates over issues such as Amtrak subsidies. It may or may not be a good idea to push rail travel, but let's at least not say it's an overreaching departure from the usual for the government.
