Monster Truck Madness

Much of the animus against the SUV involves environmental concerns. But Reason Editor-in-Chief Nick Gillespie describes how SUVs are increasingly abused on the symbolic level, for what they purportedly reveal about the sorry, fallen state of the American soul: "In just the past few weeks, sport-utility vehicles (SUVs) have been unmasked--at long last!--as the single greatest automotive threat to the American Way of Life since Daisy Buchanan took the wheel in The Great Gatsby... If neither the environmentalist nor the nativist condemnation quite drives the anti-SUV argument across the finish line, there's still the symbolic attack. In a review of Keith Bradsher's new book, High and Mighty--which is poised to become the Bible of the anti-SUV crowd--Gregg Easterbrook makes it clear that these popular vehicles are nothing less than pure evil."