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I make no apologies for owning my SUV (a Hummer H2 at that.)

And if I want to sit in it while waiting in a Starbucks drive-thru, that is my right and I will not apologize for this either.

I use my SUV mostly as a weekend/fun vehicle. The H2 is (for me) a real pleasure to drive. I have added HP to it with a cat back exhaust and a cold air induction intake. It has lots of power, excellent handling and it is great at tight turns.

If you haven’t driven one, then you just don’t know.

Driving around in my H2 may be a guilty pleasure, but I feel NO GUILT about it.

This is America dammit. I have the right to own and purchase and drive whatever vehicle I like so long as I obey the traffic laws.

While you may not understand some people choosing to spend their money on large, slow moving, “gas guzzling” vehicles, it is their right to purchase these vehicles and they should not be impugned for doing so. After all, America is a FREE country. The phrase “pursuit of happiness” comes to mind here.

Hell...I figure that since I served six years in the U.S. Navy in the 1980s (on a destroyer escorting re-flagged Kuwaiti oil tankers out of the Persian Gulf) I have earned my right to drive around in a “gas guzzler” if I so choose.

Here are some appropriate Ayn Rand quotes to properly put this issue in context:

“The worst guilt is to accept an unearned guilt.”

“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.”

“Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).”

“Do not ever say that the desire to “do good” by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.”