Can you imagine how the history of the 19th century would read if today’s panty-waist worry-warts had control back then?
The transcontinental railroad was first conceived in the 1830s and it took nearly four decades to move from concept to reality to completion in 1869. The project was enormous in scope and required amassing huge amounts of capital, technology and political will. Today, Democrats would be saying that “It would be ten years before we could move a single ton of freight on the railroad. We better continue using wagon trains and ships through the Straits of Magellan. Besides, the current technology doesn’t bother the buffalo on the plains and smoke up our pristine skies.”
The first successful cable across the Atlantic Ocean was opened in 1866 and success came only after numerous failures over a 20 year span. Again, the perseverance of a couple of key individuals and the ability to gather huge sums of capital, invent new technology and navigate difficult politics was necessary to succeed. Today Democrats would say that “It would be ten years before we could get a single message across the ocean. Be better continue sending stale newspapers and letters by ship which now only takes four weeks instead of the 10 weeks it took our forefathers. Besides, the cable would endanger whales and who knows what else on the seabed.”
Two of my favorite books about these projects are “A Thread Across the Ocean: The Heroic Story of the Transatlantic Cable,” by John Steele Gordon and “Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad,” by David Haward Bain. If you want to read about a time really not so long ago when can-do giants overcame the biggest obstacles imaginable, you won’t go wrong with these books. It will make you yearn for a different time in America and really question our nations future.
My impression is that the "Can't do" crowd is really driven by a different drummer.
Their "we can't do it, let's not even try" masks the real reason they are against the pursuit of energy independence: They want the United States and its people to suffer -- presumably because we've had it so easy to date.
It's a very perverse view of the country -- laden with guilt on the one hand and utopian dreams on the other.