When You Ride With Bin Laden

I'm not exactly sure how to classify Bill Maher's political views. He rants about war and waste like a liberal, but I recently heard him bashing Title IX on ESPN, and I've read some of his stuff that makes him sound a little less PC than I would have expected. It's possible he's a libertarian. (How librarian-esque of me to want to assign him a specific label!)

At any rate, Maher has a new book out: WHEN YOU RIDE ALONE, YOU RIDE WITH BIN LADEN: WHAT THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD BE TELLING US TO HELP FIGHT THE WAR ON TERRORISM, and there are a number of things I love about it. For starters, it's an adult picture book. Don't get excited--there are no centerfolds or risque pop-ups--instead, Maher has gathered together his opinion essays and accompanied each one with a re-designed poster modeled after those that were posted by the government during WWII. Secondly, this book is extremely timely; written shortly after the terrorist attacks in New York, it addresses issues that become increasingly important to think about as war looms on the horizon. Most of all, I personally find Maher's arguments extremely well developed and astute. Not everyone is going to agree with me, or with Maher, and that's fine, but his opinions are worth examining and thinking about, and his ability to express his ideas succinctly and humorously is worth sharing with composition students.

Maher's essays center around this theme: that in days gone by, the government did not hesitate to ask citizens to pitch in and help the country in times of national crisis. Maher says nowadays, this simply isn't the case. "We were asked to do very little," he says about the government's response to the 9/11 attacks, "and we responded. That's the bargain we tacitly make with our presidents: we won't ask too much of you, if you don't ask too much of us." We don't make sacrifices, Maher claims, we make symbolic gestures. We wear FDNY hats and attach little plastic flags to our vehicles. "Sincere tribute is always appropriate for these brave people," Maher says of the FDNY-hat wearing, "But wearing their symbols is also rubbing off a piece of heroism that isn't ours. As long as we keep talking about what they did, we don't have to talk about what we're not doing." About the plastic flag phenomena, Maher writes, "True patriotism is doing something for your country. If our car flags had to be earned with real contributions--purchased with deeds, not dollars--if each one we saw meant someone had given blood or volunteered their time or written their congressmen or saved a gallon of gas, perhaps then we'd really be bucked up at the sight of them."

Maher suggests that Americans ought to be making a number of sacrifices if they truly want to fight terrorism and help their country. As the book's title suggests, one of his main arguments is about driving. By driving alone, Maher says, we are contributing to our country's need for cheap oil, and "when we treat gasoline as if it were some limitless entitlement, we fund our enemies, like a wealthy junkie fattening the wallet of his dealer...You can bet Al Qaeda funds their most ruthless operations with money they get from people who sell their oil to Exxon before Exxon sells it to you." Besides the environmental and political reasons why we should carpool, he goes on, there are social reasons as well. "We've become a nation of individuals, accustomed to 'getting mine' and 'looking out for Number One'," Maher says. Carpooling can chip away at this selfish isolation.

As I said, Maher's opinions may not please everyone, but he does have some intriguing things to say about the state of America and about how we as individuals and as a community choose to deal woth our problems. I found myself marking numerous passages in this book and returning to essays, thinking I needed to copy and share them with people. I read few books that are strictly opinionated, but I was glad to have chosen this one.