Freedom of movement is one of the defining characteristics of American history. Indeed, Article IV of the Articles of Confederation expressly recognized the right of interstate travel. Citizens have the right to travel throughout the country at their own leisure. This fundamental right helped ensure the growth and expansion of the United States into the nation that it is today.

Of course, the primary means by which Americans travel around this great big country is via gas-powered vehicles, which the Biden administration increasingly opposes.

In the name of fighting “racism” and “climate change,” one of Joe Biden’s many diversity hires, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, recently appointed a group of 24 “leading experts” dubbed the Advisory Committee on Transportation Equity to help him come up with a plan for — you guessed it — “transportation equity.” It’s a revival of an initiative started under Barack Obama, which Donald Trump wisely ended. And judging by Buttigieg’s choice of “experts,” this is nothing more than a group designated to come up with new ways to attack Americans’ preferred and necessary form of transportation, gas-powered cars.

For example, Buttigieg’s group includes Andrea Marpillero-Colomina, who has stated that “ALL CARS ARE BAD” because they cause “a myriad of environmental issues and conditions.” Another one of Buttigieg’s “experts” is Veronica Davis, who last month wrote a paper ridiculously claiming that cars perpetuate “systemic racism” and are the biggest problem with the nation’s transportation system. Who knew that inanimate cars were racist?

As our Emmy Griffin noted earlier this summer regarding so-called 15-minute cities, the pipe dream of leftist global elites is to create these walkable cities where everyone lives within 15 minutes of each other and all the necessities of life. Necessities as these global elites define them. And cities that would ideally obviate the need for individual motorized transportation, “racist” or otherwise.

The real goal of these 15-minute cities is that of lifestyle control. No more of those “bad,” “racist” cars. Everyone will walk everywhere and be happy about it because they’re “saving the earth.” Far from utopia, this is a vision for dystopia.

Back to Buttigieg and his transportation “equity” group, this is merely the latest in the growing list of ways in which the Biden administration aims to exert more control over Americans’ lives, infringing upon our individual liberty. The EV push, the net-zero crusade, the raising of new regulations on household appliances from gas stoves to ceiling fans — all of it is being done using the excuse of curbing CO₂ emissions. Yet it’s ultimately all about pursuing a bloodless revolution against the American people.

Authoritarian socialism is the goal, and individual rights, private property rights, and free speech rights all get in the way of the elites establishing their rule. For Buttigieg’s advisory committee, the goal is not the erasure of all cars but the erasure of the individual right to private ownership of cars.

In this view, cars should be reserved for elites who “need” to travel. Air transportation should be reserved for elites who “need” to jet across the world to fight climate change — elites like John Kerry. The Biden administration’s view is eerily similar to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. It’s all about control — more and more control. Power can be a corrupting elixir, and those who come under its spell just can’t seem to get enough.

Moreover, this obsession with greater control over the lives of Americans won’t stop with cars or 15-minute cities. It will expand into what you eat, what you wear, what you are allowed to read and watch, and of course what you are allowed to say. Individual liberty is the real “problem” these Washington elites are working to eradicate.