How often do you really think about how your car works? I’m guessing not that often. 

Perhaps you have a dim recollection of 4-stroke engine operation from a high school textbook. At any rate, you know that gasoline goes in, the car goes forward, and you are a wretched sinner for polluting the atmosphere in the process. You will also be late for work if it should fail to operate properly, or if that jerk in the left lane doing 50 in a 65 zone doesn’t get the heck over! If you think about it more you should remember that the combustion of the gasoline happens with pistons. But do you think about the details beyond that? Again, I would guess the odds are against it, unless you’ve had recent compelling need to do so, or are a gearhead.

Yet it would be worth your while to grab an engine repair manual sometime, not necessarily with the intention of being able to name each individual part, but with an eye towards marveling at the complexity. You see, every part in that engine has a purpose, every part was put there by design to perform some job, every part had a designer, and every function performed by every part is a reaction to some other function. The engine itself ostensibly performs a very simple function, the conversion of chemical energy (gasoline and oxygen) into mechanical energy and heat, but the process for controlling that conversion is complex and full of nuance. When even small components fail the results can range from simple irritations to lethal failures.

Let’s start with the gas tank. You put in the fuel, but what happens next? The fuel must travel along a line to the engine, but how? Gravity? It would be amusing to contemplate vehicles with roof-mounted gas tanks like the old high-wall toilet tanks, but the real solution is to use a pump to draw the gas from the tank and shove it towards the engine.

So do we just throw the gas at the engine? Is it poured directly into the piston cylinders? No, you’ve got to turn it into a spray (atomize) so it mixes with the air, then you’ve got to somehow get the fuel and air mix into the cylinders. How is that done? Older engines used carburetors to mix the fuel and air, and that mix would be sucked down through a series of pipes towards the cylinders. The cylinders have valves that open just in time to draw in the mix. The valves snap shut, the spark plug triggers a detonation sending the piston speeding downward, imparting rotation to the crank shaft by way of a linkage on a pivot.

Already we can see the variety of mechanisms in play, and we must assume that each of the parts mentioned above has other more subtle interplays with further components. I said that the valves open, and shut-this implies some mechanisms for doing so, as well as other governing mechanisms ensuring that the openings and closings occur at the right moments. What makes the spark plug spark, much less what makes it spark at the right moment? How does the piston connect to the crank shaft? That explosion of fuel must generate some heat, what keeps that heat under control?  Presumably the moving metal parts generate friction too; how do we reduce or compensate for it?

Systems and subsystems abound, even in the simplest of engines, yet they work. In the past thirty years, spurred on by rising gas prices, competition for fickle customers, and, yes, even regulatory pressure, engineers have made tremendous improvements in efficiency, strength, power, and safety, and the vast majority of these improvements have all been in the nuances of the subsystems. The fundamental operation of the engine, however, has not changed-we are still converting, by way of combustion — rapid oxidation really — the energy of the chemical bonds in gasoline into the energy of movement.

My grandfather, a mechanic who passed away in 1984, would certainly be astounded at the engine advances. Yet he would also find many things still very familiar. The pistons, though far advanced, would still be there; the camshaft and pushrods would still be there; the oil pump and radiator would still be there. There are only so many conceivable ways of burning a fuel-air mixture and capturing that energy, and we know them well. The main alternatives to piston engines-the jet turbine, the rocket, and the Wankel Rotary, are all old technologies themselves. Click here for a great view of other types.

Society as An Engine

American society is much like that engine, with a myriad of components, sub assemblies, regulating mechanisms, intakes, outputs, and waste products, but the complexity is at a level far beyond our mere motor. Our fundamental “motor” since 1787 has been our Constitution, which is not a very long or complicated document. Like an early motor, it is simple in concept, but with an implied complexity of regulating mechanisms ranging from taxing structures (the “fuel supply” to stretch this analogy), balancers, timing mechanisms, and exhaust systems. Yet the core mechanism — like our 4-stroke gas engine — has remained unchanged in over two centuries.

We have certainly added complexity to our systems. Sometimes, just as the smog and environmental regulations of the 1970s sapped the horsepower of the engines of that time, the regulations and arbitrary limits we impose on ourselves derange and compromise our government, yet still our system chugs along. But there is no guarantee that it will continue to do so indefinitely. Capricious and ill-thought law changes have nearly killed the 4-stroke engine as we know it, and capricious or ill-thought law changes could end the government system we have enjoyed.

The peril from ill-thought change is great. Automotive history is full of questionable design flaws, from the maligned Corvair to the fiery Pinto, from the junky Fiat Spyder to the ugly Edsel. Of course the marketplace weeded these out over time, but removing dangerous modifications from our government is far harder. Modifications can, of course, improve the performance, but they can also upset the delicate balance that kept the apparatus working.

Worse still, the extreme left, the Socialists and Progressives — or whatever they’re calling themselves this week — actually want to break our motor and replace it with something else. They think they’ve discovered a new concept, a newer cleaner society, more efficient and more controlled, with fewer moving parts and better self-regulation. Yet they fail to see that the totalitarian model, in whatever guise imaginable, is old beyond recorded history. Within that history, its flaws are well documented from The Book of Kings, the records of the Pharaohs, or the archives of the Soviet Union. Just as the 4-stroke engine’s fundamentals have been constant from the 1800s to today, so too are the fundamentals of absolute rulers, regardless of modern bells and whistles.

And for the anarchists, no engine ever assembled itself. No human society of any complexity ever self-ordered. Some strong visionary individual, or some strong group of power holders always established the order, even if that initial order were nothing more than a sworn band of warriors dividing their spoils. Our society was designed.

Our civilization has many flaws, inefficiencies, unnecessary waste, misdirected energies, and design weaknesses not anticipated by its designers. Yet still it works.From time to time it needs a major overhaul (we’re past due for one right now). It may even need a total teardown and rebuild to root out the damage and wear, but still it runs, in many cases far better than the competing designs out there. Yet when mechanisms start to wear out, when ill-conceived tinkering throws the system out of balance, or when revolutionaries attempt to gut the entire system, we run the terrible risk of it all flying apart.

Cover image: Shutterstock user Oliver Sved.