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[sgtclub]

From Andrew Sullivan's Site:

Mass transit is precisely that -- mass. America is not the land of the mass; it is the land of the individual, the entrepeneur, the explorer. It is the land that does not want to wait for the governmentally-scheduled transport. It is where Henry Ford invented the assembly line to produce cars and transformed the global economy. It is the land where the car allowed for the creation of the suburb, the ranch house, the white picket fence. It is the land of manifest destiny; we drove to California, where we had Fun, Fun, Fun once her daddy took the T-Bird away. [Indeed, Rumsfeld might agree that the East Coast is Old America and the West Coast is New America, less tethered to our Euro-roots.] Before the Interstate, it was the land that got its kicks on Route 66, all the way from Chicago to L.A. It is a culture in which generations of teenagers have received their driver's licenses as rites of passage -- to adventure and romance, away from the watchful eyes of the parental units.
Still don't get it? Rent Cameron Crowe's "Singles." Or "American Graffiti." Or "Animal House" ("ROAD TRIP!"). Or "Swingers" (We're going to VEGAS, BABY!"). Or even, from the opposite perspective, "The Magnificent Ambersons."
There's a reason why it's funny when Rush Limbaugh says that the engine of freedom runs on oil; it's true! If cars had existed in the 1770s, it would have been gasoline we threw in Boston Harbor.