[zechariah]

1. Because our Great Grandfathers tax dollars built it

Hmmm...must have been done on the cheap. They didn't pay income taxes back then!! Anyway, we should have built it in Nicaragua.

2. Because we owned it

Haven't you ever donated an old junker car to a local charity?

3. Because it's strategic

Er, strategic to what? Our ships won't even fit through the canal anymore.

4. Because we're the arrogant capitalist pigs of the planet and we should stay that way

But the canal was never a project of capitalism. Shoot, in its heydey, I doubt it ever made any money. But just look at Panama City; now there is arrogant capitalism for you. If you didn't know better, you'd think you were in Miami.

5. Because I hope that answer (#4, above) offends the heck out of you for asking such a sucky question!!!

Nah. You'll have to try harder.

[z]

[SierraWasp]

"...have to try harder."

Not me! I'm given up right NOW! You're just too tuff!!!

[Bonaparte]

"Our ships won't even fit through the canal anymore."

Huh? Major locks widening projects are already underway. But even before they're complete, huge commercial traffic goes through that canal, a third of it panamax. From Central America Weekly just 2 years ago --

Because 10 percent of the world's ships are unable to pass through the narrow waterway, the canal, hoping to remain one of the fastest and easiest shipping routes between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, is undergoing its biggest expansion since workers carved the 50 mile watery path through Panama's mountains. The project, which includes plans for the world's biggest lock, will drastically alter the country's landscape, turning jungle communities into lakes and forcing thousands from their homes. "If we want to maintain Panama as a route of preference, we have to look at expanding the canal," Canal Administrator Alberto Aleman Zubieta said. "We have to adjust the canal to the dimensions that the industry has already decided on."

"10% of the world's ships"? I think that means 90% are able to get through even before it's enlarged.

[Bonaparte]

Go here and educate yourself. Cuts are being widened, locks enlarged, channels deepend. The Canal is not the quaint outdated curiosity you've suggested it is. In another 8 years, it will handle most postpanamax container vessels.

[TenthAmendmentChampion]

Anyway, we should have built it in Nicaragua.

Is it still possible we could do this? That would be great if we could bypass the old Panama Canal altogether with a new super canal that could accommodate aircraft carriers...

But then the enviro-whackos might gripe that the fresh water lake in the middle of Nicaragua would get contaminated with salt water from the oceans. I think they have the only fresh water shark in the world in that lake. Ah, modern living. Ayn Rand is spinning in her grave...