Automobility and Equality

Conservatives tend to abhor expansive change; this is why a Mormon "right winger" like Glenn Beck loathes "progressives." Reactionaries prefer change in the backward direction; they seek to roll back the clock to an imaginary bygone golden era that would presumably benefit them and "make things right again." 

Political and religious conservatives are all essentially the same, whether Mormons, Puritans or Taliban, although on a sliding scale through chronological time, some are more actively repressive and violent than others.

The right to vote has long been a battle between those who seek to broaden voting rights and those who want to restrict and obstruct them. This is true of civil rights ahd human rights in general.   

The right to drive is being contested right now in Saudi Arabia; activists are having to resort to simplistic and fairly disingenuous arguments to further the idea of driving rights for women (what if the privileged male driver has a heart attack? etc.) In any case, I hope that Saudi activists like Wajeha al-Huwaider, Manal al-Sherif, Fawzia al-Uyyouni and others succeed in their efforts to expand the idea and reality of equal rights. I should point out there are "reasons" for blocking women from driving in Saudi Arabia, but they are brutish ones designed solely to prop up an obsolete status quo.  

Today's Rune: Movement.