American Dream

You wanna separate the Puritans from everyone else? Ask them their opinion on the Hummer, any one of the three models. Or about the new Ford GT supercar.

Normal, non-Puritanical folks will wax poetic about sports cars, convertibles, even minivans and station wagons. They will go on and on about their first car, and associate different vehicles with different stages in their life. They associate their cars with glorious road trips, taken with college chums or the family.

We love our cars. We love looking at other people's cars. We might not choose one, but normal folk do not mind when other people haul their families and gear around in an SUV. We get a kick out of the sheer bravado of the new Chrysler 300C, a 340-horsepower Bentley-esque creation that is an understandable hit among rap stars. And we get a chuckle out of the Hummer, especially the H1.

Who needs a military vehicle to cruise around Orange County? To the neo-Puritans, that's terrible. A waste of resources and a potential danger. They would never have allowed such a travesty to ever grace the streets. To the rest of us, the excess is the point. I wouldn't want one, although I have enjoyed zooming up the Oceana dunes in one of them, but if someone else wants that style statement, more power to them.

That's what separates the Puritans from the rest of us. Their world is one of dour sameness: egalitarian, gray, environmentally conscious. No one would stand out or choose anything that didn't express a drab PC ethos. Light rail, buses and trains would be the preferred mode of transit.

SUVs are the Great Evil.

Cars, trucks and even SUVs are practical, fun, flexible. They haul lots of stuff. They allow families to travel places comfortably together. They look nice, and there's something about the sound of a revving engine. They epitomize freedom and mobility.

Even if gas prices hit the roof, we'll keep driving. I always laugh at the emails I routinely get from environmentalists warning me that our current lifestyle will collapse as soon as supplies of gasoline evaporate. I shouldn't expect environmentalists to understand markets, and realize that alternative fuels will become widely available if and when they become an economically reasonable alternative.

I don't care if my car is powered by petroleum, hydrogen or rabbit pellets, as long as it does 0-60 in under 8 seconds.