So, what with the advent of the silly term "NASCAR Dad" and the recent kerfuffle over Robby Gordon's complaint about women drivers being lighter, so their car will go faster (Yes, I know that he was talking about Indy cars, but he drives NASCAR now), I got curious about the rules that govern NASCAR. Now, apparently, NASCAR doesn't release its rules publicly, but the folks who put together "A Yankee's Guide to NASCAR" have ferreted out a lot of them, and compiled the basics.
I don't have the patience to watch car racing or (or full cricketmatches), but the NASCAR rules are pretty interesting reading if youlike technology. What I found most interesting is that there are a lotof rules for car weight, horsepower, and technology imposed almostentirely to ensure that the winners are sorted from the pack by theteam's talent and their luck on the day. Just because you can affordan Indy car that could beat the hell out of all those stock cars, thatdon't mean that you get to race the Indy car against the stock cars. That view, that talent and luck on the day ought to win out, is theliberal position.
Liberals are comfortable with inequality of outcome. We'recomfortable with the notion that some people are smarter or strongerthan others, and that they'll succeed while others fail. That's prettymuch the luck of the draw. We're even comfortable with a fair bit ofstarting-point inequality -- some people are lucky enough to be borninto better circumstances, and the cultural price to really level outthose kinds of inequalities (even if it were possible) is really justtoo high for most people to contemplate. But our support for thingslike public education and some publicly-funded bottom to the incomescale which falls well above starvation is based on a pretty simplenotion: Talent and luck on the day should be more important than whichcar you can bring to the race.
Liberals: We're for NASCAR Rules.
