ALAN writes:

Shortly after nine o’clock on Easter Sunday night, I was watching an old movie when a strange noise outside attracted my attention. It was not the sound of an auto collision or screeching tires, but rather a muffled thump, followed by silence. I did not go out to investigate, but I suspected an auto accident of some kind. A few minutes later, the sirens proved me right. For ten minutes, the night air was filled with sirens.

In far south St. Louis, there is a bridge that spans a wide drainage ditch, and two roads that run parallel to the ditch on either side.  Traffic is heavy on all three roads.  Nearby residents call them “speedways,” because that is how they are used by anarchists and morons who compete to show how much they hate traffic laws.

What about traffic law enforcement, you ask? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! That’s a good one! You must be from another planet or another century. There is no traffic law enforcement in St. Louis or any other kind of law enforcement.

Astronomer Oliver Justin Lee wrote in 1939:

“Every day, when driving, I experience keen pleasure in showing some courtesy of the road or receiving evidence of it from others, usually the mature drivers, rarely the youthful. Note how jealous many drivers are about their cars. They must go fast, they must prove to every other driver that their car can go faster, climb easier or roar louder than anything else on the road. I often feel like saying ‘Don’t be cocky. Anyone, even a witless moron, can push down an accelerator’ …  There is much hysterical driving of automobiles, much ill-nature and thoughtlessness…..”  [Oliver Justin Lee, Beyond Yonder, Chapman & Grimes, 1939, p. 23]

It was precisely one such moron who caused the accident Easter Sunday night by driving his truck at 80 miles per hour along one of the roads perpendicular to the bridge. At that moment, a 23-year-old woman was attempting to make a left turn at a traffic light at that end of the bridge. She had the extreme misfortune to have the truck hit her vehicle, knock the engine out of it, and knock her vehicle back on to the bridge. The truck then flew off the bridge or down an embankment into the drainage ditch where it landed in a heap (the muffled sound I heard) and caught fire. Passersby responded and pulled the driver out of the burning truck. But they couldn’t pull the young woman out of what was left of her vehicle. It took the ‘jaws of life’ to do that. She had multiple critical injuries, was taken to an ICU, required surgery, and will end up in a wheelchair until she learns and is able to walk again.

All of that took place in less than five seconds.

Grown men invented the automobile, and then the automobile made grown men into perpetual teenage boys. Speed and Noise are the pagan gods they worship. They think that being able to make big machines go fast makes them superior to previous generations who did not have that ability or the arrogance to imagine it confers virtue upon them. They think it proves that they are real men. I suggest it proves that they are moral imbeciles.

American manhood took a steep turn downward when “What’ll she do?” became a measure of masculinity among teenage boys and teenage-witted men. “She” is always the jalopy, the hot rod, the sports car, the low rider, the latest and fastest car.

As men acquired greater power in the form of motor vehicles, they became less inclined to exercise power over themselves, their lust for speed, and the primitive appetites that Edmund Burke said require the strongest moral chains.

This was evident to philosopher Anthony Ludovici in 1947, when he wrote that the thrill of speed and the feeling of power conferred by the automobile mean that “we are back in the jungle again.” [“Back to the Jungle”]

He argued that the increasing stupidity of modern men would find expression in automobiles designed for speed and comfort. He knew that automobiles are not primarily about transportation but about power. If transportation were the goal, bicycles would suffice but would not allow morons and teenage boys to be loud and arrogant.

That such morons are given license to defy traffic laws at whim and kill or injure law-abiding motorists is of course one more consequence of the moral-philosophical-political swindle called “government” and “The Law.” That is bad enough. But comments offered by people in response to the Easter night collision are inane and witless. “Probably needs barriers here and there…”, one fool remarked.  It typifies the stupidity of modern men: Propose technical solutions for moral problems (i.e., contempt for rules and laws).

Dozens of collisions have taken place on and near that bridge. How could two drivers collide there on a morning when it was clear, bright, peaceful and quiet and when there were no distractions and only minimal traffic and when neither of them was speeding?  I don’t know how, but they did — right in the middle of the intersection, where one of their vehicles toppled over and landed on its roof, the driver, a young woman, crawling out through a window and saying to herself “I can’t believe it….”   I have seen other collisions there involving monster vehicles and motorcycles, on none of which “barriers” would have had the slightest bearing. And how would “barriers” prevent a moron driving at 80 mph from wrecking a woman’s life? Blank out. Stupidity unlimited.

It is impossible in St. Louis — a famously “Progressive” city — to have a rational conversation with such people or to expect accountability or enforcement of laws from the liars and frauds who now occupy city government and the prosecutor’s office.

A veteran automobile driver wrote in 2005: “Automobile culture is obnoxious and senseless. Cars are the gaudiest fashion item in existence.   ….. Not only are they predominantly ugly, but the uglier they are, the more their owners take pride in them.  Power is the priority…..”   [Jan DiVincenzo, “Cars and the Power Cult”, Jan. 31, 2005]

The esthetic ugliness of modern motor vehicles is a perfect match for the primitive teenage-boy frame of mind revealed by so many of those who drive them.

“The Motorist’s Prayer” [ The Motorist’s Prayer « The Thinking Housewife ] advises both a steady hand and watchful eye. That is excellent advice. Modern Americans have a critical shortage of both, but what they lack even more are the moral chains that Burke said qualify men for civil liberty.

Heaven must surely be a place where one is not assaulted endlessly by the infernal speed and noise of internal combustion engine toys.

— Comments —

Robert Robbins writes:

Alan writes:

That such morons are given license to defy traffic laws at whim and kill or injure law-abiding motorists is of course one more consequence of the moral-philosophical-political swindle called “government” and “The Law.” That is bad enough. But comments offered by people in response to the Easter night collision are inane and witless. “Probably needs barriers here and there…”, one fool remarked.  It typifies the stupidity of modern men: Propose technical solutions for moral problems (i.e., contempt for rules and laws).

As man makes more powerful machines, his “moral chain” must be commensurate with his technological progress. Alan suggests that motor vehicles as such are evil, and that anyone who enjoys their power and speed are moronic imbeciles with a thick greasy streak of stupid across their foreheads. Well, that was the tone the article was written in, and I must say it was a rather lowbrow tone at that. Alan is entitled to his opinions, and that is fine, but some things he says are silly, like the above quote where he says people have a “license” to defy traffic laws to injure or kill people. Who says that? Surely not the motorists, nor their lawyers, nor the law, only Alan; or that government is a swindle. Is Alan an anarchist?

I guess I took especial interest in this article because as of late I have rediscovered my boyish love of beautiful cars, though not so ardent a love as when I was ten. I think that fast cars are an expression of power like Alan quotes someone as saying in the article, but that is not a bad thing. On the contrary, power is very good. Weakness is evil. Spiritual or physical weakness is nothing to rejoice in. We only rejoice in Christ on the Cross because He freely laid down his life. No one forced the Omnipotent to lay down is life for His beloved. That’s power.

So, I would say, instead of condemning cars, condemn (if you dare) the ones who drive them unlawfully. Alan does that, I suppose in his own way, by lowbrow insults like “imbecile” and “moron.”

One last thing.

Alan writes:

The esthetic ugliness of modern motor vehicles is a perfect match for the primitive teenage-boy frame of mind revealed by so many of those who drive them.   

I have a perfect incomprehension as to why Mr. Alan thinks modern motor vehicles are aesthetically ugly. What are his criteria of beauty I wonder? Symmetry, proportion, harmony, rhythm, brightness? I assume it must be because he is over seventy and has his own ideas of motor vehicle beauty which is probably based on the curve than the angle. But beauty is not confined to an age or style but transcends time through rationality—for all beauty is the pleasant effect of a rational thing—which is why no one calls a hunk of clay beautiful.

Laura writes:

Cars can be beautiful. And they can be ugly. Drivers can be courteous and expert; drivers can be morons or exhibitionist.

You make some good points.

I do not condemn the love of cars or other machines as stupid or immoral.

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