Last week, I essayed the analysis that the nation’s ethical infrastructure, like our physical and political infrastructure, is sagging and crumbling, and that it urgently needs rebuilding (“Our new social cancer is ethical,” September 18).

Today, I turn my focus on the nation’s physical infrastructure – from highways and bridges, to airports and seaports, to energy plants and distribution facilities, to public transport systems and telecommunications, and the nation’s public school and public health systems – and their perplexing and perpetual state of insufficiency and disarray.