Like many Americans, I have all manner of problems with the Biden administration’s ongoing attempt to coerce us into electric vehicles over the next decade. I object to the federal government presuming that its role in our lives includes telling us what we may drive; I am unpersuaded that the law the White House is using accords Washington, D.C., the power to remake the car industry; and I am bothered by the false assumption that, because upper-middle-class people seem to like Teslas, the average citizen is yearning for his Ford Explorer or Toyota Corolla to be converted into a glorified golf cart. But, in addition to all of these more reasoned explanations for my opposition, I have another: I like cars.
Does that seem irrelevant to this debate? If it does, it shouldn’t. This is a free country, and one of the good things about free countries is that the people who live in them are allowed to decide how they want to live without apologizing for it. America is a complicated place, and it can be hard to put one’s finger on exactly what makes America so American, but, for me at least, one of the things that springs to mind when I try is that it is full of gasoline-powered cars. It is true that, if those cars went away, America would not instantly perish, but that is also true of baseball and jazz and hamburgers and the Rocky Mountains and rollercoasters and the Statue of Liberty, and that it is true is not an argument in favor of rapidly phasing those things out either. Properly understood, conservatism consists of a great deal more than reaction, but, within reason, there is a place for reaction within it. I like America, and because I like America, I do not wish to see America as it is currently constituted go away. Petrol engines are part of America. I wish to keep them.
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