The Chieftain – Oil propaganda

So The Chieftain has served up yet another installment of oil industry propaganda (Sunday Ideas, Sept. 6). If only we could overcome those eco-obstructionists and drill for more oil, we’d free ourselves from the grip of Middle Eastern tyrants and prices would drop!

This is a mathematically ridiculous fantasy that does not remotely reflect how the world oil market operates. I strongly encourage citizens who truly care about their nation’s security to do their own research. Visit the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Web site (www.eia.doe.gov)  and compare U.S. daily petroleum consumption with our proved reserves. It is shocking. Learn what “economically recoverable oil” means. Listen to what T. Boone Pickens, longtime oilman, has to say.

The worst part of the drill-till-you-drop argument is that it absolves us of any personal responsibility to change our nation’s perilous course. Those blasted environmentalists are to blame – not our gas guzzlers, lead-foot antics, elective long-distance commutes or engines left idling in the supermarket parking lot.

The Death of Conservatism

Sam Tanenhaus has just published a short book entitled The Death of Conservatism.   American conservatism is dead, Tanenhaus reports, because it lost its connection with its own essential modesty; its proper role was to act as a counter to “liberal overreach,” of which there was plenty in the 1960s and 1970s. Once it sought to advance policies of its own, and attempted to devise a philosophical justification for those new policies, it was done for.

Now we have a bunch of theatrical talking heads pandering to a minority of right wing radicals.  As a guy who always thought of himself as a conservative, I have had to distance myself from the right wing. I am still a fiscal conservative but a moderate in most other elements of life.  As a political persuasion Libertarianism is tantalizing since it promotes what I value – supporting strong personal rights to life and liberty.

Perhaps we should start a new political philosophy based on fractals – A fractal is generally “a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole.”  This new Fractal Party would be homogeneous and represent the individuals fondest dreams since it individual parts would be smaller copies of the whole Fractal Party.  In other words we would be represented as per our wishes since they would be the same as the founding equation and thus the Fractal Party would be a positive force with positive attitudes.

In a way the right wing of today (radicals) is a Fractal Party since they pretty much agree on everything but in a negative direction.  Maybe the radical left wing is the same thing if you come full circle.  What to do?

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