Applying context to one cornerstone of our society.

** I took some notes that have been clogging up my notebook for far too long and put them into Google Gemini, asking it to write an essay in the style of William F Buckley. I did edit it a bit, but I had to share it because I have been laughing ever since.**

One surveys the contemporary American landscape and is immediately struck by a curious and unsettling malaise: a profound societal drift, a staggering want of that essential cultural choreography which has, in all flourishing and durable civilizations, served to shepherd the populace through the necessary stages of growth and subsequent decline. We speak, of course, of those signal rites of passage, the established rituals that mark the passage of the individual from one stratum of responsibility to the next, thereby informing both the initiate and the community of the new expectations incumbent upon them.

For centuries, such rites—from the solemnity of marriage, which properly shifts one’s focus toward the exacting and glorious endeavor of family-building, to the venerable demarcations of Communion or the Bar Mitzvah—have provided the requisite scaffold. They supply the cultural syntax, the shared understanding of when one is rightly called to a greater seriousness, a more mature contribution.

The peculiar predicament of the American melting pot, however, has proven to be an insidious solvent to this cohesion. Our traditional rites, attached as they are to a veritable kaleidoscope of constituent, separate cultures, have suffered a collective marginalization. They persist, of course, but as fractional, non-binding observances. The result is a dispiriting vacuum: we suffer from the absence of a single, secular, and universally recognized civic guide to hold this disparate society together.

The Asphalt Aisle: A Universal Rite

If one seeks a foundation upon which to build this sorely needed consensus, one need look no further than that great, sprawling grid of asphalt and concrete that is the American roadway. It is, quite simply, the skeletal structure of our society. Every citizen, every single day, regardless of creed, color, or political persuasion, engages with this network as driver, passenger, or pedestrian. The road, then, is the universal crucible of American experience.

It is here, on this shared, elemental stage, that we may introduce a new, binding civic ritual. Consider a mandatory road use and safety class to be undertaken by all students in the sixth grade. Upon successful completion, the twelve-year-old would have the option to receive a lower-class license. While ostensibly more of a foundational identification than a full driving privilege, this document would represent the first, formal, state-sanctioned recognition of the young person’s burgeoning civic responsibility.

Furthermore, upon reaching the age of sixteen, this lower class license, functioning also as a universal ID, must become compulsory for every able-bodied citizen. The instruction and examination for this fundamental qualification should be rendered free and readily accessible online, with the resultant digital license likewise issued without charge. This simple act—accessible, ubiquitous, and essential—would not only make our roads safer by ensuring every single person knows the rules of the road, but serve as a secular coming-of-age, tying the individual’s identity directly to a universal, shared civic contract.

The Sunset of the License: A Liability Acknowledged

But a healthy, sustainable society is not merely concerned with the assumption of responsibility; it must also gracefully and firmly manage its necessary relinquishment. It is every whit as vital that a twelve-year-old be impressed with the call to greater duty as it is that a seventy-five-year-old be gently but inexorably led to the acceptance that their presence behind the wheel constitutes a growing liability.

Therefore, at the opposing terminus of this civic arc, every individual must forfeit their standard driver’s license at the age of seventy-five.

Let us not succumb to maudlin sentimentality. While some elderly citizens remain as sharp as a tack, the undeniable, exponentially increasing probability is one of declining faculties and diminished reaction time. To ignore this demographic reality is not kindness; it is culpable negligence.

We must introduce a civic structure that demands both the initial, binding acceptance of responsibility and the eventual, necessary acceptance of senescence. The road is not merely a means of transit; it is the arena where we can forge the bookends of a coherent American citizenship, guiding us all from the first tentative journey to the final, obligatory surrender. It is time we steered our culture back onto the road of order and common sense.