Now that we have lurched into the new millenium with a mere economic meltdown, it’s time to address more relevant things. Someone has to speak out in defense of road ragers, those long-suffering motorists who finally crack under the pressure of dealing with stupidity and malice on our highways. Unfortunately, these victims are demonized by p.c. pundits for expressing their rage. Excuse me, but what’s wrong with flipping out when you cross the path of some nitwit mishandling a lethal weapon? OK, now, don’t get me wrong. No one advocates violence; but good drivers have every right to their tantrums, to their eyeball-bulging, fist-clenching, foot-stomping, expletive-deleted fury. Let’s put an end to the Clintonesque habit of blaming the victim for judging the criminal. Let’s just admit that we have wives, husbands, other relatives and close friends out there who are vehicular sinners. And let’s stop making excuses for their incompetency and iniquitous behavior. So their fathers never took them to a Nascar race. So they never had a stick shift. So their Saudi Driver Education Instructor was a former camel dealer. There simply is no justification for committing one of driving’s SEVEN DEADLY SINS. These transgressions are not honest mistakes. All of us have pulled out in front of someone, or stalled the engine when the light turned green, or drifted over the yellow line, or forgot our brights, or zoomed through a caution (oops, red) signal, or became engrossed in Playboy/girl at 65 mph. Deadly sins on the other hand are premeditated acts designed to bully, impede, frustrate and obstruct, a way for “law-abiding” citizens to legally inflict their boorish behavior on other drivers and get away with it. To wit:

THE FIRST DEADLY SIN: PASSING LANE LUST. These resentful, likely puritanical morons lust after the passing lane. Their greatest thrill is to pull alongside a right-lane vehicle and keep exact pace with it to jam miles of interstate traffic. Not for one moment should you be fooled into thinking these villians are unaware of their sin. “After all,” they think sanctimoniously, “I’m already doing 66, and that’s as fast as anyone else needs to go.” Please, Lord, let their Afterlife consist of endless lines at the nether world urinal.

THE SECOND DEADLY SIN: PASSING LANE PRIDE. Meet the contemptible cousin of the Luster. Prideful drivers generally have sleek, smooth sedans or trendy SUVs equipped with the most precise cruise control. Almost always, their vehicles look immaculate. These anal types know they are superior to the great unwashed and therefore believe they deserve to be in control. It is with this smug attitude that they ease into the passing lane, tearing along at 62.0002 mph to overtake someone doing 62, both on cruise. It doesn’t take a degree in differential calculus to prove the pass will consume an agonizing 4.3 minutes in 4.14 miles. Meanwhile 78 enraged drivers trail in the convoy from Hell. An eternity shackled to a burning treadmill is not enough punishment for this crowd.

THE THIRD DEADLY SIN: PASSING LANE COVETOUSNESS. Hannibal Lecter said evil covets what it sees every day. Covetous people on turnpikes track their prey with glee. You are the quarry and they chase you down easily. Unsuspecting fool that you are, you have it on cruise control in the right lane, gauging the speed of the onrushing vehicle in your side view mirror. As you approach the slower traffic in your lane, you anticipate the pass and prepare to remain in cruise and pull out behind the passer. Piece of cake. But, incredibly, THE PASS DOESN’T HAPPEN. For some reason, the predator slows just off your rear quarter-panel as both vehicles approach the slower right-lane traffic. There’s still plenty of time and room. WHY DON’T THEY PASS? You poor devil, now trapped on your left, have no choice but to brake to avoid a rear-end collision. Mission accomplished, the bully accelerates to find another wretch just over the next hill. My wish is it could be Lecter himself, to have them for dinner.

THE FOURTH DEADLY SIN: TAILGATE GLUTTONY. Maybe tailgaters are genetically linked to the Earnhardt ancestry. The most ravenous of their number prowl high speed passing lanes. Their only reason for living is to blow you off the highway. You’ve been there—cruising at 80, moving very swiftly past a line of slower traffic, when a pair of headlights shows up in your back seat. When you finally clear traffic to move over, the intimidater suddenly decels and reverts to the sin of Passing Lane Covetousness, hoping to run you into the back of slower machines. In your zeal to think well of all Mankind, please don’t be blind to the Truth. Some very nice people are criminals.

THE FIFTH DEADLY SIN: PARKING LOT ENVY. Psychologically impaired, these envious cretins can not allow owners of distinctive vehicles to protect their investments by segregating them in the distant confines of cavernous parking lots. No way, they say, as they pull their rattletraps alongside, nice and close. That’ll teach you to think you’re better than me.

THE SIXTH DEADLY SIN: TWO-LANE AVARICE. The motivation behind greed is feeling important by having something others can’t have. In this case, “something” is a monopoly on a busy two-lane road which discourages passing. A perfect place for petty, self-indulgent miscreants to tool along well below the limit. They glance repeatedly in the rearview mirror to relish the sight of an ever-lengthening line of bumper-to-bumper truckers and motorists. Now, they think, maybe somebody will get impatient enough to pass on a hill and we’ll see some action. This is True Crime committed by the uprighteous folks next door.

THE SEVENTH DEADLY SIN: TRAFFIC LINE SLOTH. Lazy egotists believe they’re too good to stay in line and suffer like the rest of us suckers. They zoom down the highway trouble lane like a cop, passing two miles of double lane traffic stalled by construction. Turn signals flashing, they cut in line in front of some good hearted soul who always turns the other cheek. Cheaters like this get away with murder because good people do nothing. A sign of the times.

EPILOGUE: Instead of scolding the road ragers, federal and local authorities should hire a marketing firm to produce a national ad campaign aimed at identifying the deadly sins of driving. Police should stop persecuting speeders and start prosecuting real Evil. If we work fast and influence sinners to repent, we could spare the Hereafter a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth.

You don’t blame God one bit for being miffed. Of all His concoctions, humans are the absolute pits — a bunch of self-indulgent, spoiled crybabies. He’s told us how to live but we insist on breaking all the rules. Generation after generation, we repeat the same tired mistakes and, worse, we have the audacity to whine and moan when things go south. He gave us a majestic universe, but nothing’s ever quite right with it. It’s too windy, too cold, too dry, too wet, yada yada. If the wailing weren’t irritating enough, can you imagine His dismay as meteorologists (the only profession where being wrong is irrelevant) and arrogant environmentalists predict the health of the Earth? No wonder He loses his cool and wants to slap us silly. No wonder He reminds us who’s in charge. He’s sick of hearing about the low water table. When He sent us relief from drought, did we thank Him? Of course not. The meteorologists weren’t satisfied with raging rivers, full lakes and flooding. They never are. The water table, they sniveled, is still below acceptable geologic levels. And that’s not all, they say. The planet’s at risk in a hundred other ways. Global warming is killing us. Gasp. Gasp. Meanwhile, all God’s children gaze hypnotically at TV weather imagery and listen dutifully to the weather celebrities who tell us what they don’t know every hour of the day and night. These people have Satellite Enhanced Imagery, Super Doppler, Double Doppler and Accu-Weather technology. With these toys, they tell us it could rain or snow or be partly cloudy or partly sunny or hail or freeze beginning tonight or maybe tomorrow or depending on the low or the high it might do something — perhaps. In that regard, I offer a scientific question: If the weather is out there somewhere, and a meteorologist is not there to predict it, does it really happen?

Maybe you’ve heard of John Galt. No? Shame on you. He was the inventor of a new source of inexhaustible energy — likely fusion — which formed the basis of a new society. This was a secret place somewhere in the desolate West, far from civilization and free from the tyranny of governments. Galt’s colony was a type of Capitalist Utopia, where ethical and self-reliant people could pursue their lives under a just system of laws. Ayn Rand was an idealist. However cockeyed and romanticized Atlas Shrugged may be, it is her anthem to Liberty, perhaps eclipsed only by her earlier work We The Living. Although Rand was an avowed atheist and therefore condemned, Tom Jefferson and she would have still hit it off. Tom and his pals risked everything in defense of Liberty. Rand despised Socialism. Tom detested King George. You guess both their souls are spinning madly in the Afterlife as they witness the mess this country’s in as it sprints away from the Declaration of Independence and gang rapes the Constitution. Here’s a thought. Wonder what would happen if, magically, a new land were discovered; and the people of that land would adopt the original American principles of our Founders and defend them at all cost? Would U.S. citizens sell their stuff, forsake Oprah and the NBA and emigrate to this new place? Shoot, there wouldn’t be enough boats and planes to handle the stampede . . .well . . . as long as it had purple mountains and fruited plains and tropics and rivers and lakes and desert and beaches and seasons and wildlife and spacious skies and amber waves of grain.