You won't get any argument with me on nuclear power. We are in pretty close agreement on that.

But I think you should give some more thought to the relationship between government and big business (NOT the same as the "private sector".) From the very beginning, the government has played the role of partner to the major industries of the day, from having the Royal Navy convoy the East India Company's ships, to going to war with the French over Hudson Bay Company furs, to using the cavalry and cheap government land to pave the way (well, lay track) for the railroads. And in our own day, the Military-Industrial Complex and the the Beltway Bandits.

Even you have pointed out the relationship between the Interstate Highway System and the motor and oil industries. It's not all the bitter adversarial and ideological struggle you paint, in fact, what ticks off this liberal is not that the government wants to run everything, its precisely that private and public sectors work so well together that the comnmon citizen, AND the small businessman, haven't got a bloody chance and have litttle choice but to pay for it too.