The lesson is that when an autocrat needs a road to the airport (a good route of escape) he can just confiscate people’s property, making the road as straight and as quickly traveled as possible. As President Obama observed in his State of the Union address on January 25, 2011, when discussing the similar issue of building railroads, “If the central government wants a railroad, they get a railroad—no matter how many homes are bulldozed.” He was contrasting what autocrats can do with what he, as a democratic leader, cannot.
