Know Thy Libertarian Enemy

Irritating New Yorker essayist Adam Gopnik has a piece out that describes many of you, dear readers, this way:

The reason we don't have beautiful new airports and efficient bullet trains is not that we have inadvertently stumbled upon stumbling blocks; it's that there are considerable numbers of Americans for whom these things are simply symbols of a feared central government, and who would, when they travel, rather sweat in squalor than surrender the money to build a better terminal. They hate fast trains and efficient airports for the same reason that seventeenth-century Protestants hated the beautiful Baroque churches of Rome when they saw them: they were luxurious symbols of an earthly power they despised.

Cato Executive Vice President David Boaz files an appropriate response well worth reading.

Reason on transportation here, on airlines & airports here. Nick Gillespie and I have a chapter celebrating the (Democrat-led) 1970s modernization of air travel in The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong with America, and I wrote about how Western Europe has long since lapped the U.S. in deregulation-fueled air travel advancements back in 2005. I also wrote about The New Yorker's ideological frustrations (pictured) last month.