President Barack Obama lamented recently that Americans have “lost our ambition, our imagination, and — and — our willingness to do the things that built the Golden Gate Bridge.”

There are at least two facts that must be pointed out here. First, the Golden Gate Bridge was built by private enterprise, not government. If anything, government was a major obstacle to the bridge, thanks to opposition from the Department of Defense and the mistaken opinion of a San Francisco city engineer that the ground under the Bay would never support such a structure.
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