The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 2 of 6)

/p>

Enjoyed Mr. Stein's Column on the modern Pharisees. A couple of corrections, though:

1) The High Priests of the Temple were not the Pharisees but the Sadducees, an entirely different political/religious sect. The Sadducees, the descendants of the Maccabees, were of the tribe of Levi, therefore priests (all priests had to be Levites). The Pharisees were more like a "religious police." They were people who followed all the Rabbinical traditions (added on rules and laws that flowed from rabbinical interpretation of the Torah) and were allowed to enforce these rules on the people.

p>2) Jesus did not disagree with the Pharisees because they were self-righteous or hypocritical, although many of them were. Jesus condemned the Pharisees because they were honoring and elevating their own interpretations and traditions above the actual word of G-d in the Torah. Jesus disagreed with them because they were leading the people astray by not accurately teaching and leading the people according to Torah. br> -- Will Decker /p>

Even though I agree with every detail in this piece, it makes me angry again and I can feel my blood pressure rising. I take this very personally, as you will see, for reasons that Ben didn't discuss.

The first reason is that my exercise of choice -- and anyone else's for that matter -- is more beneficial to society than the dictates of all the academic pharisees in this country.

That exercise of choice has been progressively eliminated "for my own good" by propagandists from Gore to the creators and finaglers who gave us the CAFE standards. Some of the mileposts on this road to socialism were Buick Roadmaster, Cadillac Sedan de Ville, Pontiac Parisienne, Olds 98, etc. You get the drift. And I understand it won't be much longer now for the Ford Crown Victoria and Mercury Marquis, regardless of the preferences of police here and provincial agencies all across Canada as well.

The unavailability of the Chevrolet Caprice and Impala in their former (unacceptably large) format from 1977 through 1990 is the one that torques my jaws today. Besides a 2001 Lumina sedan, we still drive a '90 Caprice with 165,000 miles and the usual appearance wear but still a more comfortable and useful car than the Lumina. It has a trunk space large enough to use the car like a pickup truck in many cases; and I do that regularly for yard work, etc. And, horrible to admit, it has such a wastefully large V-8 engine. Except that it isn't. It is capable of a severely measured and honest 25mpg. How many SUV's will deliver that, all the while costing so much more to buy or lease and insure and maintain? And the rest of us have to endure super-bright, higher headlights boring through our rear windows like a death ray! Just because federal bureaucratic pharisees decided that Americans burn too much gasoline and Americans and their families don't need such large cars anyway. We must follow the lead of the socially superior and environmentally sensitive and globally conscious Europeans.

So, those who know what's truly good and best for us turned the CAFE screws tighter and tighter. My Chevy dealer told me that in 1990, the last year for "the old breed"(I bought mine three years later), the CAFE mileage penalty was more than $1,200. Taxation at its absolute worst and most confiscatory. This money went straight to Washington with not a penny of benefit to GM or Chevrolet Division, and certainly none to the buyer! Naturally, the manufacturers built fewer for a "shrinking market"! Except that individuals and families moving around this huge continent still want and need larger and comfortable vehicles for the long haul, and one way or another they would have them. Pickup trucks obviously don't fill the bill, and for reasons I'm unaware of, for lots of people evidently 4-door vans don't either. By twisting and slipping through a loophole in CAFE, though, the manufacturers were able to design SUV's and manage to attract and satisfy a lot of buyers who probably would have continued to be happy with large sedans and station wagons. The really main thing is that I would have been happy!!

p>Instead, what we all got was forced and uneconomic adjustment in a market, coercion instead of freely negotiated design/styling choices based on buyers' preferences. In two disgraceful words to be applied to the American experience: distortion and dictation. br> -- Tom Bennett

topics:
Sports, Environment, Law, Socialism, Energy