'Down Mexico way'

Of course, one advantage to being in San Diego is the ability to go down to Mexico so easily.

And you get there via a trolley car which, at the beginning of its journey, travels through the city streets of San Diego like a tram. (We went down for lunch.)

I guess as an Australian I'm quite knocked out by the ability to travel so far in so short a time. Victorians can travel across the Murray to Albury, of course, and New South Welshmen (or women) can go across to Wodonga, but 15 minutes after alighting at San Ysidro, California you're in the land of Dia de los muertos, toreadors...

Amerindian traditions...

and requesting 'Dos cafe con la leche' in a McDonald's where the young kids behind the counter do not speak English.

It's bustling and noisy (both in colour and sound) and contrasts with San Diego, which strikes me as a once-beautiful city where an eraser went through and left swaths of carparks

(although definitely once beautiful).

In Mexico, 15 minutes after leaving the States there are the typical shortcuts of poorer countries - unsecured lights and unfinished wiring hanging down over the rough, uneven steps of a pedestrian overpass, for example.

It makes me wonder why it hasn't occurred to anti-regulatory Americans that the absence of regulation can be a pre-condition for Third World standards. But, sigh, people hug their entrenched positions...

I noted also, on the way down to Mexico, the wonderful mountain ranges you see all the way down the Californian coast to Tijuana.

There is a grand beauty in the mountainous spine of this state. Which gives me another chance to extol the beauties of Los Angeles - once you get away from the freeways and culverts. Because this is what you can see in the Santa Monica Mountains between the coast and Thousand Oaks.

Seriously. This is maybe 8 miles from the Ventura Fwy. There are warnings about mountain lions at the beginning of the trail. How come no-one ever talks about the remnant beauty of this city?

Perhaps because this hidden gem is less easy to get to than Mexico?

Liberty

In Washington, the seat of government, my thoughts turn to the concept of 'liberty'.

There are those who pursue the idea of liberty down to questioning the need for a Federal Emergency Management Agency FEMA ('more Washington', 'more regulation'). And yet, there is always a point where even the most libertarian politician will call a halt to all-out freedom. It might be a woman's right to choose, it might be gay marriage...


There always seems to be a point where even Liberty's staunchest advocates tolerate some hemming in. In the Declaration of Independence, 'liberty' shares its keynote clause with 'life' and 'the pursuit of happiness'. In the Constitution, as a keyword search tells me, 'liberty' appears only once along with a whole list of other aims. In Gouvernor Morris's great words: 'to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty...'

I suppose 'liberty' is better suited to a clarion call than some of the other aims. After all, Patrick Henry did not cry, 'Give me general Welfare or give me death,' or 'Give me happiness or give me death.' But it would be interesting to find out how liberty came to be almost exclusively the only virtue.

Of course, there is a lot of wriggle room to achieve liberty in. In a country like Australia, where we have far more government intervention, an atheist, red-haired, unmarried woman who lives with her boyfriend can become Chief Executive.