On the car

Some half-formed thoughts from my morning drive to work:

In the ~10 years that have passed since I obtained my license to drive a car, I have gone from being enthralled by the freedom it offered me to being disgusted by how it enslaves me.

I do not miss many things about life in the District of Columbia, but do I miss the MetroRail.

Why have we gotten rid of streetcars?

Surprisingly--or perhaps not so surprisingly--I have come to agree with those (in the words of Marion Montgomery) "men I have chosen for my fathers," such as J.R.R. Tolkien and Russell Kirk: the car is--to quote Kirk--"a mechanical Jacobin."