George Will on Transportation

George Will’s latest Newsweek column tries to discuss the changing character of current secretary of transportation Ray Lahood. In its thesis, the column has two honest questions which are; (1) how does someone like Republican Ray Lahood get into the “can-do” spirit of the Obama administration regarding the regulation of transportation? And (2) why should we regulate how and what people drive, and where they live?

Those are important questions. And for the most part, I was on board with George Will, until this:

And long before climate change became another excuse for disparaging America's "automobile culture," many liberal intellectuals were bothered by the automobile. It subverted their agenda of expanding government—meaning their—supervision of other people's lives. Drivers moving around where and when they please? Without government supervision? Depriving themselves and others of communitarian moments on mass transit? No good could come of this.

That cannot be a serious argument. Do you honestly expect me to take the rest of your column seriously after a passage like that? At what point in the 1950s did liberals become the Gestapo?

I know you’re better than this, George Will. Try again.