America's Pulpit Above the Tailpipe
Pro-life vs Confederacy: The conservative guide to choosing a license plate
As everyone with a bumper sticker knows, there's no point in having an opinion if you can't showcase it on the back of your ride.
When it comes to being a traffic evangelist, the presentation matters as much as the message. That's why over 100 organizations, from the Girl Scouts to the Dallas Cowboys to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo have promoted their brands on specialty license plates for a share in the fees.
But now that the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles is considering a plate that features a Confederate flag, what's a principled conservative to choose?
What means more to you — Dale Earnhardt Jr. or a fetus you've never even met that will probably grow up to be a Democrat?
It's a tough call. Sure, you could go with a plate from your alma mater, Baylor or the University of Oklahoma. But unless your pick-up truck (and it is a pick-up truck, isn't it?) is black and really sets off your Texas Tech tricolor plates, after the age of 25 (or three years after graduation, whichever comes second), it's time to find a new conservative statement.
Should you go with the Confederacy, which "honor[s] Texans who fought in the Civil War," the newly approved "Choose Life" plates, which fund controversial crisis pregnancy centers, or should you flaunt your nonpolitical passion, NASCAR?Sure, the Confederate flag is the classiest possible way to represent Southern pride, but this completely non-racist memento of our proud past fighting to continue the enslavement and ownership of other people has been tarnished by Michiganders and trashy residents of the Jersey Shore.
While your cotton sharecropping ancestors might be proud to know you haven't forgotten how they fought to preserve the plantation-based economic structure, some idiot might think you just don't like minorities and accidentally ding your car in the parking lot 10-15 times. It's a risk.
So maybe it's better to focus on the living than the long-dead. And maybe Kyle Busch and the NASCAR people don't really need that license plate money. (Especially now that the state is taking it.) But what means more to you — Dale Earnhardt Jr. or a fetus you've never even met that will probably grow up to be a Democrat?
Having Choose Life plates could get you some pats on the back at church. Having NASCAR plates could totally score you some free beer from other tailgaters at Texas Motor Speedway.
And frankly, doesn't the NASCAR plate say everything you want it to say? Doesn't it effectively identify you as white, conservative, Christian and male, all while giving you that special tingle of knowing that you've got the number 24 on your car when you're drag racing on 288?
Yeah. I thought so.
