A bit of old New York.

150 years or so ago, New York City was virtually out of clean fresh water. So they embarked on an infrastructure building program to bring water from an upstate watershed to the city, building giant reservoirs and aqueducts.

I ran through a park in Harlem this morning and saw this person-hole cover. I thought about infrastructure. How people and governments used to invest. And how inalienable rights like access to clean drinking water weren't once under siege by tea partiers who would declaim that such beneficence was contrary to our founder fathers' notions of individual freedom and states' rights.

People used to care. And further, they cared that others didn't care.