The Left Hates Cars Because They Hate Freedom
Eliminate the cars to lessen the freedom. Eliminate the cars to increase the dependency on the state
Just outside Rome one can still walk the 2000 year-old Via Appia, an ancient road constructed by the Republic for the betterment of the community, a gathering place, and providing a convenient access for migrant communities journeying to city.
That’s a lie. Pretty funny one, too, if you consider what the Republic thought about non-Romans. Rome built roads for one purpose and only one purpose: the Legions. Because of the cleared paths and flat surfaces, Rome could move tens of thousands of men, horses, carts and wagons, and supply chains to anywhere in their lands with tremendous speed. This kept the peace and protected Rome for centuries from both domestic and foreign unrest.
That these roads were also used by merchants or traders or farmers or even nobles visiting their villas, is ancillary.
We need to return to the Roman understanding of roads: their purpose in our society is less for the military but the need for efficient, agile, unencumbered movement of people and goods remains paramount. This, too, will keep the peace.
But our roads are under attacks, and this time, by the leaders of our Republic. Our leftist leaders.
One of my favorite regular media appearances is with Fox News’ Jimmy Failla who used to be a NYC cab driver, and we often talk about the relentless attack on roads shifting with leftists shifting their purpose from agile movement to community feel-good stupidity, and creating chaos in the process.
Mayor Bloomberg started it with the pedestrian plazas shutting down major intersections, diverting traffic so a southbound car on Broadway is forced to go right, left, left, right to continue straight. He did this to create the hang out spot of Times Square with artist renderings of two women laughing, eating salad in a flower garden. What resulted was streets of masturbating homeless and naked women posing for photos for money.
The cars were so much better.
Mayor DiBlasio continued the war on roads with his endless dedicated bike and bus lanes. Now, with no significant change in the number of cars on its road over the last 20 years, NYC has massive congestion problem. Queens Boulevard (made famous from the Mark Wahlberg show) was 12 lanes: three in the main road, three in the service road, in both directions, a major thoroughfare across Queens. It is now half that, and traffic hell, in both directions. In Manhattan, 8th Avenue was four-lanes. You could hail a cab at Penn Station (34th Street) and catch the lights right, be at 72nd Street in minutes. Today, it is two-lanes of bumper to bumper hell.
Government’s solution: a tax. A $9 congestion tax because government caused it, but you are going to pay for it.
Progress!
What’s the war on roads really about? Cars. The left hates cars because they hate freedom. They hate autonomy and the free movement of free peoples, and cars enable all of that. Cars must be canceled. They cannot make them illegal so they will make them so incredibly inconvenient and expensive, that eventually you will give them up.
“No Kings”, right?
What does the left love? The state. And nothing is more a sign of the state than public transportation and government owned and operated buses and trains. It gives government dominion over you and makes you subject to them. The state decides your movement, times and stops, routes and stations. Leftists see an old lady waiting for a bus and don’t see inconvenience or inefficiency or even indignity. They see compliance. They see the machine at work and relish a subservient, powerless cog in the state machine, subjugated, waiting, dependent, asking please, sir, may I ride your bus?
Your car competes with the state itself. Your ability to come and go as you please, move as you please, independent of them… why, it’s downright frightening. In fact, it could be a threat to our democracy.
Eliminate the cars to lessen the freedom. Eliminate the cars to increase the dependency on the state.
Parking meters were really the first big push. Originally it was a revenue source, but now parking meter rules are punitive. This is a twofer: punish people for being free AND increase state revenue. I distinctly remember a dime getting you an hour of parking as a kid in NYC. Last I saw, it’s twenty-five cents for 6 minutes.
You and your car, and the nerve you have thinking you can just park where you want. You can’t! And we’ll make sure of it. NYC has roughly 3,500 full time ticket-writers generating half a billion dollars in revenue, punishing people for the crime of parking in a place or for a length of time they deem unsuitable. Now, it’s muslim Ugandan mayor is proposing to expand parking meters to every available space in the city. Every spot. Imagine that… thinking you can park in front of your own home. You can’t! And we’ll make sure of it.
I’ve often mentioned how, when leftists need to enact something sinister, they hide behind children like Hamas firing rockets from schoolyards. In another attempt to kill the car (freedom) New York’s foreign born Jihadist mayor lowered the speed limit for several blocks around schools to 15 miles per hour. Though there have been no reported cases of children getting hit by cars outside school… it doesn’t matter. Who doesn’t want to protect children? So, in a city with several thousand schools, basically the entire city is now 15mph.
But not buses. No, dedicated bus lanes can go, go, go! And you can, too, if you only stopped being so stubborn and gave up your car for the greater good of society.
It’s not just New York. Basically every city is doing this because every city is run by leftists. Chuck Todd, the unpopular and unlikeable former Meet the Press anchor and regular on MS whatever it’s called now babbler, tweeted that President Trump’s vanity projects were causing traffic throughout Washington, DC. “Not sure this admin cares how they disrupt life in the area” he whined.
Except it’s not true. The “vanity projects” like the Columbus Fountain restoration or the reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial haven’t blocked off one street. Dupont Circle stated completely open while the fountain was repaired. So did Freedom Plaza. So did Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the Navy Memorial. And Lafayette Park hasn’t had traffic since it was closed to cars after 9/11 let alone any traffic near the ballroom.
But what has changed throughout DC and impacted traffic patterns? Bus lanes and bike lanes everywhere. Pennsylvania Avenue NW is down several. K street NW is down lanes and also at a crawl of 20mph speed limit (probably because of the children). 15th Street NW along the Treasury Department is a nightmare with scooter lanes and pedestrian lanes, because all those bankers going to see Secretary Bessent are taking an E-Bike to their meeting. Who doesn’t love to work up a sweat wearing a suit and tie?
But Chuck would never call out the reason for traffic in DC. In his leftist heart he must protect the progressive agenda of turning roads into vehicles for forced equity by eliminating vehicles altogether. For when we are all sweaty and gross at a bus stop in the heat or stuck underground like moles waiting for the subway to gobble us up, when we are all waiting for a bus or a train, and we vote for increased funding for buses and trains because we are now completely reliant on the state to get us from point A to point B, then we will all be equal. Browbeaten, yes, but docile as we ask our elected leaders to drive us somewhere like we once asked dad. The state… as a parent. The state… taking care of us. Providing for us. Forever their children.
The left hates your freedom. Look at all the many ways you exercise freedom and how the same leftist have attacked it. Remember when Joe Biden proposed a minister of truth to oversee what is said online? Remember the vitriol that Twitter now called X is no longer censoring speech. Look at attacks on the second amendment… for the children, of course. Wherever you can exercise freedom is the left trying to curtail it “for democracy”.
You exercise your freedom with your car. But they run the roads, and they will set the rules trying to drive you off the road and into their arms. My advice: talk radio. Books on tape. Find a subject and do a deep dive. There’s a 100+ episode podcast on ancient Rome where they talk a lot about the roads. What I mean is: stay in your car. Put up with the traffic. Don’t give up your car. Don’t give up your freedom!
Honor and courage.
Daniel Turner is the founder and executive director of Power The Future, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for American energy jobs. He also runs a sheep and cattle farm in rural Virginia. Contact him at daniel@powerthefuture.com and follow him on Twitter @DanielTurnerPTF
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