The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways (commonly known as the Interstate Highway System, Interstate Freeway System, Interstate System, or simply the Interstate) is a network of freeways that forms a part of the National Highway System of the United States. The system is named for President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who championed its formation. Construction was authorized by the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, and the original portion was completed 35 years later. The network has since been extended, and as of 2010, it had a total length of 47,182 miles (75,932 km), making it the world's second longest after China's. As of 2010, about one-quarter of all vehicle miles driven in the country use the Interstate system. The cost of construction has been estimated at $425 billion (in 2006 dollars), making it the "largest public works program since the Pyramids". The system has contributed in shaping the United States into a world economic superpower and a highly industrialized nation.
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“The improved American highway system ... isolated the American-in-transit. On his speedway ... he had no contact with the towns which he by-passed. If he stopped for food or gas, he was served no local fare or local fuel, but had one of Howard Johnson’s nationally branded ice cream flavors, and so many gallons of Exxon. This vast ocean of superhighways was nearly as free of culture as the sea traversed by the Mayflower Pilgrims.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
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—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
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—Pierre Charron (1541–1603)
“Authority is the spiritual dimension of power because it depends upon faith in a system of meaning that decrees the necessity of the hierarchical order and so provides for the unity of imperative control.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)