And I mused about broader questions. I wondered why the liberals in the crowd hadn't considered that if the government can't handle paving roads, it certainly shouldn't handle the health care system. I wondered why liberals never stopped to think that perhaps the government isn't built to stop purported global warming; this little traffic jam alone was burning carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at an enormous rate. I wondered why liberals believe that the people best qualified to handle the education, Social Security and welfare systems are the same folks who left the office at 4:59 p.m. last Friday thinking that they had done a good job with construction on the I-5.
Most of all, I wondered why liberals are so worshipful of government in the face of all available evidence. If this had been a private toll road, you can bet that customers would have been notified upfront of the major delay. But because the government is free to tax and spend as it chooses, there is no incentive to treat drivers decently.
The same holds true more generally. Private industry has a stake in efficiency and customer service. The public sector has no such stake.
Here's the most ironic fact: As we drove by the construction area at 3:30 a.m., we didn't see a single construction worker. The delay accomplished nothing, other than the illusion of improvement. But that's what the government traffics in: illusions of solutions. Which is why my wife and I reached our home at 4:30 a.m. Monday morning, tired and grumpy, our gas tank empty and our patience gone. May all liberals sit through such traffic before they vote big-government Democrats back into office.