WHY WE BUILD MORE PARKING LOTS THAN MUSEUMS

Fundamental to the difference between the United States and the Eurasian half of the world is the way we look at time. In the thousands-of-years old civilizations of Asia and later Europe, your past is what you build on and memorialize. Here, all too often the past is what you forget and instead of memorializing its remains, you clear them away for new parking lots....!

You doubt it? Walk the streets of Jerusalem, Athens or Rome. Around any corner you're likely to encounter an ancient wall, temple or aqueduct with people taking its picture. In downtown Chicago, maybe a tiny unnoticed memorial plate in the sidewalk right next to a spanking new parking lot. If nothing, we are a practical people.

Historical and preservationist societies work hard to save our past, but compare their clot with downtown entrepreneurs and -- well, another parking lot!

Walking the streets of other ancient cities -- Cairo, Istanbul, Venice and Paris -- there's no reason to feel outdated. Unlike Hollywood's B-movie versions of turbaned beggars and singing pizza peddlers, these are glistening metropolitan centers housing easily as much talent and income as ours. Somehow, though, glorifying their past greatness is as important to them as erecting new greatness. It's usually not an either/or choice for them. It's largely a matter of understanding that the seeds of their future lie buried in their past.

One great irony to this small wisdom is our American railroads. Perhaps the only technology we have allowed to regress rather than progress. In the golden age of railroading, great silver trains sped from city to city at 100 mph while serving fine dinners and wines on white tablecloths. Today, the old four-hour trip from Chicago to Minneapolis is eight. And that's only on the days there aren't any hour-long delays because of slow-chugging freights. Other trips to other cities are not even on the schedule anymore. And fine menus are now boxed lunches.

If air travel were replacing rail travel with bold new speeds and services, fine. But have you been stuck on a tarmac lately munching bags of peanuts you had to pay for...?

As Congress wrangles with another annual budget simply to keep old rickety Amtrak alive, they can watch 200 mph trains flashing through Europe. To city after city, on-schedule after on-schedule. The issue here of course is more than money (another mistake young kids and nations often make). The issue is to once more look over our shoulders to where and why we have come from, before deciding where and why we intend to be.

I have nothing against cars and parking lots in reasonable numbers at reasonable prices. But I do have a lot against time-locked thinking which finds discarding our past the cheapest way of reaching our future. We're too great a society to be caught with our past down...!