[rrpjr]

Superman: I find your conflation of politics and driving, as I did your comparison a while back of behavior in the sandbox to future political affiliation, interesting but flawed.

First, and I admit this in my own case, it is not easy to know the politics or ideology of a person cutting you off. If you are inclined to make a stab at it at all, you are likely also inclined to grab at the evidence available to you, as incomplete and perhaps misleading as it is, such as bumper stickers. We are ranging into highly speculative areas here. It’s fun, as pigeonholing usually is, but that may be the extent of it.

Your characterizations of capitalists have the feel of caricature: "Greedy," Darwinian and "self-serving." I trust this reflects your experiences, or your thoughtful extrapolations from observing society. But I don't accept it. It ignores or fails to appreciate the complexity of capitalism, the way self-interest is bound up in group-interest in modern Ameican life. It ignores the resounding success of the system on behalf of the human body and spirit – in producing prosperity and freedom to degrees hitherto unknown to man. It also ignores the coincidences of rising prosperity and increased charity. Your characerizations seem to belong to a texbook socialist screed and do not apply to capitalism in America.

You are also assuming that the capitalist who risked his personal wealth on expanding his business in a way that will produce 100 more jobs as well as the ability to provide maternity leave to his employees is somehow “greedy”, I guess, if his expansion accrues to his own personal wealth, if not his immediate liquidity. Having stretched oneself for one’s dream and being rewarded for it, which is what capitalism is about at its essence, isn’t it – the chance to dream and to risk the attempt to achieve it, to test oneself against elemental forces and other men, because this an undeniable human longing – you are assuming that he will take certain other kinds of risks as well as demonstrate anti-social "competitiveness" on the road. This doesn't translate. For one, the competitiveness required to succeed in business is anything but anti-social. It is, in fact, a highly refined skill that has more to do with patience, emotional maturity, and the ability to withstand disappointment and hold to one's resolve -- exactly not the type characterized by bad drivers, who are not so much “competitive” as immature and retaliatory.

Isn’t it just as possible that the expression of capitalism satisfies some innate drive in man to compete and achieve and to acquire the emoluments of a good life as a result, and that this will in turn moderate his primal frustrations and make him a more considerate driver? Isn’t it just as possible that the apparent “cooperative” and accommodating” socialist is in fact repressing some basic aspect of his human nature off the road, and that as soon as he gets in a car, alone and behind the wheel of a monstrously powered vehicle, he becomes an unleashed menace of primal rage? Makes sense to me.

There is a basic paradox to human nature which socialism never accepts or internalizes – the idea that combativeness and competition are part of the full play of man’s nature and lead, or can lead to, greater good all around. Capitalism is in fact the more honest and adult system – it accepts man’s imperfectness and honors his capacity to dream. It doesn’t deny the former, and therefore will not abrogate the latter for the sake of perfection.

I can only cite my own experience growing up around CEOs and captains of industry. I found them, in the main, a jolly and frank group of people with very little personal rage issues they needed to work out on the road. My father was a capitalist of a high order, a high-flying CEO of a major corporation, and he drove a Porsche with all the gusto we all like to think we bring to our own driving, and with as much safety as joy.

Skip: I don’t hate SUVs. I just find them objectionable and incoherent. I don't want them banned. I just hope people stop buying them.