by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n Gas Dreams Come True<\/strong><\/p>\n High energy costs to the Obamites are only unfortunate in terms of overcoming short-term political challenges. Otherwise, they are more or less welcome. That is not a partisan slur, but simply a summary of the 2007-8 Obama team\u2019s view of energy prices \u2014 and the 2009-11 uninterest in exploring for new oil. True, we are, as the president says, pumping more oil than ever. But that is only because of prior leases, approved by Clinton and Bush, that have come on line, and the quite spectacular \u2014 and unexpected \u2014 oil finds in the North Dakota Bakken fields.<\/p>\n If one were to collate Obama\u2019s campaign rhetoric (bad coal companies would be \u201cbankrupt\u201d under his envisioned cap and trade plans, energy prices would \u201csky-rocket\u201d) with that of Secretary Chu\u2019s (\u201csomehow\u201d American gas prices should climb to European levels; we should be worried about our abundant fossil fuel resources that can \u201ccook\u201d us), then the present climb to near $5-a-gallon gas is what the president and his energy secretary once thought would be salutary \u2014 a sort of Europe USA. After all, we Americans in our ridiculous pick-ups and SUVs (remember the president\u2019s advice to the questioner concerned about fuel prices to trade in his gas-guzzler, or perhaps his earlier advice to inflate our tires in lieu of off-shore drilling) sort of got what we deserved.<\/p>\n Just consider all the positives that accrue from climbing prices: Subsidized mass transit (\u201chigh-speed rail\u201d) \u2014 managed by government and operated by public union employees \u2014 becomes more palatable. When fewer people drive, then we are \u201ccooling\u201d the planet and lessening our carbon footprint. Moreover, subsidized wind and solar and \u201cmillions of green jobs\u201d are closer to reality. The Volt, not the Yukon, is on the horizon \u2014 but, again, only at $5-6 a gallon.<\/p>\n In short, the only reason why Obama brags about record US oil production is for purposes of reelection (otherwise, he would rather borrow to buy Brazilian off-shore finds to help our southern neighbor). We are living the Obama-Chu dream as outlined by both. Again, to quote Secretary Chu, \u201cSomehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n I think that \u201csomehow\u201d has been reified.<\/p>\n Big Debt, Small Problem<\/strong><\/p>\n What is so bad about this year\u2019s $1.6 deficit, or the additional $5 trillion in debt piled up by Obama since January 2009? Without the 2010 Tea Party-inspired midterm correction, would Obama today be at all rhetorically concerned about deficits? We lament that such borrowing is unsustainable, but why do we think others would agree? Is not Greece a more equitable, a more livable place in 2011 than in 1990? Instead, look at debt through the Obama prism.<\/p>\n Printing and redistributing more money devalue the currency, and are already leading to increases in inflation: those without capital benefit, those with it find their stash lessened in value.<\/p>\n The decline of the US dollar is an inevitable reflection of a new unexceptional America, one nation among many abroad, with a currency that reflects such a readjusted profile. If it were a question of balancing the budget or expanding federal employment and entitlement payouts, then obviously \u201cpeople come first.\u201d Record debt means record levels of federal employment and redistributive entitlements. We have now reached a point where half the population pays no income tax. More money was borrowed in February than in all of \u201cBush did it\u201d 2007. Half the population also receives some sort of federal pay or entitlement. For a quarter of the population, federal money is about their only source of income. Some may vote on the basis of worrying over deficits; but others may vote on the basis of whether checks are cut off and reduced \u2014 or instead maintained and increased.<\/p>\n Republicans have leverage to cut spending instead of raising taxes when the deficit is $300 billion; but at $1.6 trillion, tax hikes may be part of any \u201cdeal.\u201d Raising taxes in this gorge-the-beast agenda is, of course, good. Compensation is arbitrary, and the government has a moral right to readjust net income, to ensure an equality of result rather than a mere law of the jungle equality of opportunity. In short, learn to love deficits. Greece and Portugal had Germany for back-up, we have the \u201crich.\u201d<\/p>\n The Logic of Illogical Foreign Policy<\/strong><\/p>\n An alien from the outer solar system would look at what we see as the confusion, misdirection, irresolution, and disingenuousness of American foreign policy in the Middle East, but conclude instead several clear-cut themes. One, we are suspicious of democracies. Why else would we harangue Israel and complain about the policies that led to a constitutional Iraq \u2014 the only two democratic states in the region?<\/p>\n Two, an outsider would also suggest that anti-Americanism is a good thing. Why? The two most anti-American and deadly regimes in the theater, Iran and Syria, both exported terrorists to Iraq, are wrecking Lebanon, wish to destroy Israel, are trying to acquire nuclear weaponry, and slaughter their own. Yet they are precisely the two regimes which we consider most authentic and worthy of reset diplomacy, and thus we apologize to them, promise not to meddle in their countries, and declare their dictators \u201creformer [s].\u201d In contrast, brutal pro-American dictators, who nonetheless do not exercise the level of violence against their own as do the Iranians and Syrians, are ordered to go \u2014 and did. The former two surviving rogue nations bandy about pseudo-words like \u201crevolutionary\u201d; the latter two defunct regimes were simply less flashy, more straight-forward kleptocracies.<\/p>\n Three, we also show forbearance to those who do not give up their nuclear weapons (Iran) and attack those who do (Libya). Finally, in the case of Libya, a mess might be viewed as a reset policy. The new Libyan possum way of war is to ignore Congress, subordinate our options to the Arab League and the UN, weaken NATO, sorta, kinda turn a blind eye to radical Islamists among the rebels, use the military for declared \u201chumanitarian\u201d intervention, and then show how a country of 7 million can stymie the United States. There are lessons to be learned for all of us \u2014 and a blueprint for a new, humbled America abroad.<\/p>\n Race Matters More Than Ever<\/strong><\/p>\n Add up the following: the attack on the \u201cstupidly\u201d acting Cambridge police, Eric Holder\u2019s \u201ccowards\u201d and \u201cmy people,\u201d Justice Sotomayor\u2019s \u201cwise Latina,\u201d Van Jones\u2019 rants against white polluters and mass murderers, the president\u2019s declarations like the following: \u201cAnd if Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, \u2018we\u2019re gonna punish our enemies and we\u2019re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us\u2026.\u2019\u201d Or the following, \u201cWe can\u2019t have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don\u2019t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.\u201d Or the race, class, gender video appeal to \u201cyoung people, African-Americans, Latinos, and women who powered our victory in 2008 [to] stand together once again.\u201d What, then, is left of a supposedly racially neutral presidency?<\/p>\n In other words, if Obama had modeled his presidency after a Colin Powell\u2019s or Condoleezza Rice\u2019s tenure as secretary of State, then race would have been seen as incidental, not essential, to his character and agenda, and support for his presidency would have been predicated solely on principles rather than appeals to particular identity groups. The current rising racial awareness is no accident, but essential to focus support for liberal issues in traditional terms of polarization, victimization, and increased racial identity \u2014 especially as independents get frightened and peel off. Since 2009, we are less seen as an integrated, assimilated, and intermarried melting pot, but more a mosaic of competing interests that predicate their rival claims on society based on race, class, and gender.<\/p>\n Bloc voting and identity \u2014 the \u201cbase\u201d \u2014 aid the Obama agenda; race as inconsequential does not. Before Obama, the now explosive and globally viral video of two young black girls\u2019 savage beating of a white transgendered victim in a McDonald\u2019s would have been one of many tragic morality tales about the generic dangers of drifting into the wrong places at the wrong times in an unsafe contemporary America. But after the precedent of the Skip Gates presidential intervention, the question naturally arises \u2014 when and when not does the president intervene in local issues, in symbolic terms, to offer the nation a teachable moment on racial bias: when an elite professor is inconvenienced in private or an adolescent is almost beaten to death in public? (Where is the Malibu outrage in the tradition of Matthew Shepard?)<\/p>\n Suffering Guardians<\/strong><\/p>\n Some of you see hypocrisy with Obama\u2019s abject about-face on Guantanamo, renditions, tribunals, preventative detention, Predators, Iraq, public campaign financing, revolving door appointments, earmarks, and promises to post legislation on the internet. Others note the paradox of an anti-war Laureate invading a third Arab Muslim oil-exporting nation that posed no threat to US security. Still others can\u2019t figure out how progressives, people of the people, so easily melt into Martha\u2019s Vineyard, Vail, or Costa del Sol. Or how a reformer, a hope-and-change avatar, can preside over the tax-cheating or tax-avoidance of Timothy Geithner, Eric Holder, and Hilda Solis (and let us not forget Tom Daschle or Charles Rangel).<\/p>\n Easy answer: sophisticated guardians, as liberal technocrats, cannot possibly live by the myriad of complex rules and regulations that are necessary to corral a less able, wild society. They need \u201cdown\u201d time, given their herculean labors, and surely as Ivy-League experts can be trusted without the intrusive oversight accorded to\u00a0hoi polloi<\/em>. In the Obama dream, Harvard- and Yale- trained lawyers, empathetic Wall Street magnates, and progressive CEOs need not be bothered with fear of hypocrisy, conflict of interest, or taxes inasmuch as they have devoted their entire lives to making sure that we, the ignorant, do not destroy our own lives. What we see as rank hypocrisy, they see as an occasional expected carelessness, or overindulgence of the guardian class who is simply exhausted. The stage driver with the reins often gets more tired than the unthinking horses he whips on \u2014 and surely deserves a drink at the bar for ensuring that the steeds don\u2019t take the coach into the ditch.<\/p>\n I could go on, but the picture is clear enough. We are living the Obama dream \u2014 one that about 45% of the population more or less embraces.<\/p>\n \u00a92011 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Gas Dreams Come True High energy costs to the Obamites are only unfortunate in terms of overcoming short-term political challenges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[271],"tags":[12,143,308,1057,321,1055,1066,293,626,1036,473,213,219,205,1016,67],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-NW","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":877,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/faith-based-energy-policy\/","url_meta":{"origin":3096,"position":0},"title":"Faith-Based Energy Policy","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 27, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services When the summer driving season starts soon, and tension heats up over Iran, gas may reach $5 a gallon. Nothing bothers voters more than paying an extra $20 or $30 every time they fill up. In times like these, they soon might prefer\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Energy"","block_context":{"text":"Energy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/energy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":887,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-gasoline-nightmare\/","url_meta":{"origin":3096,"position":1},"title":"A Gasoline Nightmare","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 22, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Obama is barnstorming the west \u2014 blasting oil companies, trying to convince voters that he supports an \u201call of the above\u201d policy, and reminding them that drilling has increased since his tenure. But that won\u2019t work for five reasons. 1) No one believes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Energy"","block_context":{"text":"Energy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/energy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":912,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-gaseous-policies-of-barack-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":3096,"position":2},"title":"The Gaseous Policies of Barack Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 12, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media \u201cThey\u201d Did It (Again)! There are no \u201coil men\u201d in the White House. So the Obamites cannot, as in the past, blame Halliburton, BP, or Exxon for rigging gas prices out of the Oval Office. Which leads to the question: why then are prices\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Energy"","block_context":{"text":"Energy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/energy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3405,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-man-made-energy-crisis\/","url_meta":{"origin":3096,"position":3},"title":"A Man-Made Energy Crisis","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 28, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Gas is well over $4 a gallon in most places in California \u2014 and soaring elsewhere as well. But are such high energy prices good or bad? That should be a stupid question. Yet it is not, when the Obama administration has stopped\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Energy"","block_context":{"text":"Energy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/energy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":982,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-un-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":3096,"position":4},"title":"The Un-Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 8, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Barack Obama\u2019s favorability in the polls fell when he acted like himself \u2014 overexposed, hard-left in his press conferences, and boastful about legislative achievements like Obamacare and a stimulus of more than $1 trillion. Then a strange thing happened. Obama largely went quiet.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "First Term Policies"","block_context":{"text":"First Term Policies","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/first-term-policies\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":806,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/sitting-out-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":3096,"position":5},"title":"Sitting Out Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 2, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online We recently saw lots of sit-down strikes and demonstrations \u2014 the various efforts in Wisconsin, the Occupy movements, and student efforts to oppose tuition hikes. None of them mattered much or changed anything. There is a sit-down strike, however, that has paralyzed the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Debt and Deficits"","block_context":{"text":"Debt and Deficits","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/debt-and-deficits\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3096"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3096"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3098,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3096\/revisions\/3098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}