I do agree. Before the Interstates, the road was freedom. It took you into America. Now it just takes you through America. Big difference.

When I was six, my hapless father decided to move us from PA to Phoenix in search of the big score (it didn’t happen). Fittingly, we took the Okie Road.

To get there we drove, (two adults and three kids) in a car with no air-conditioning or seat belts, west to Springfield, IL, and got on old 66 to Arizona.

For a little kid, it was both boring and fascinating. Route 66 didn’t go around anything. It went through small towns and big cities. I saw real people. They even waved.

Chains were nonexistent. There were local coffee shops and restaurants. Motels shaped like fantastic animals. Bizarre roadside attractions where I begged my parents to stop. A crazy jumble of local gumption.

We drove through Oklahoma City at night. I remember an oil derrick on the Capitol grounds. Surreal.

And the boredom. West Texas will always be my symbol for boredom. Endless miles of ugly nothing.

But the real point is that it was all local. Now, America is homogenized. Anywhere you go you see the same stores, restaurants, etc. That’s if you bother to get off the Interstate and look.

I also agree that WWII marked the turning point. The vast wartime mobilization could only work through centralization. Giant bureaucracies were invented. The federal government became huge and present everywhere. Prior to the New Deal and the war, Washington was just a far off place to most Americans.

The army was demobilized after the war. The bureaucracies remained and used the Cold War to get ever larger and stronger. The Feds began to reach into parts of American life they had never touched before.

Through the 50s and 60s the structures metastasized. Command and control and chain of command provided the models.

By the 70s, it was all in place. The later arrival of the Internet provided the last piece of the puzzle, enabling the global hive mind.

Few can remember what personal liberty looked like. Fewer still can even imagine it.

And now, here we are. Around and onward we go, where this leads I do not know.