3 Dollar Gas An Opportunity - Road to the Middle Class

SOME OBSERVERS think that President Bush’s dismal job approval rating is not about the mess in Iraq. It is not about the shocking corruption of the Republican Congress. It is not even about President Bush’s failure to prevent Hurricane Katrina. It reflects Americans’ rage at $3.00 per gallon gasoline.

How can you pursue happiness in that mammoth Ford Expedition with heated leather seats if your gas bill starts competing with your mortgage payment?

Democrats have suddenly discovered that they are shocked by high gas prices. The New York Times reports that “Democrats running for Congress are moving quickly to use the most recent surge in oil and gasoline prices to bash Republicans over energy policy.”

Oh really. This is the party that stopped the nation building nuclear plants. This is the party that toyed with carbon taxes. This is the party of Al Gore, now right in the middle of publicizing An Inconvenient Truth, “by far the most terrifying movie you will ever see.” This is the party that won’t let oil companies prospect for oil off the left and right coasts. This is the party whose activists prevented the US from building new petroleum refineries. This is the party that filibusters against drilling for oil in an arctic wilderness that just happens to be right next to a major oil pipeline with spare capacity.

And now Democrats are bashing Republicans over energy policy? Yes, and Republicans better get out in front of them before $3.00 gasoline and An Inconvenient Truth brew up a “perfect storm” and blow the nation into an eco-Marshall Plan to increase energy taxes and throw subsidies at a daunting array of environmentalist pet projects from wind farms to biodiesel.

Read Al Gore’s article in Vanity Fair to understand just how terrified you should be. After reciting the usual catalog of climate changes, he warns of “the 10,000 foot mound of ice on top of Greenland” that would, if it melted or broken up, “raise the sea level worldwide by more than 20 feet.”

In the face of all this, “why is it that our leaders seem not to hear such clarion warnings?” Maybe, Al, it’s because they don’t just listen to eco-alarmists like you but also contrarian ideas like the theory of the University of Virginia’s Bill Ruddiman that global warming from agriculture has already staved off the next ice age.

Al Gore reminds us that “The Chinese expression for ‘crisis’ consists of two characters: ??. The first is a symbol for ‘danger’; the second is a symbol for ‘opportunity.’”

He is a politician and he would know. It is when they feel danger that the people rise up and demand that the politicians “do something.” For a brief window of opportunity the special interest blocking forces are weakened as the people demand that the politicians lead them to safety.

All the stars are in alignment. Americans are angry as they shovel out $80 to fill up their SUVs. The Democrats are hypocritically on the attack, threatening to get to the right of the president; the mainstream media is baying for blood, shoveling anecdotal stories of helpless consumers ruined by high gas prices.

Usually economic “crises” are bad news because they provide an excuse for the politicians to do something stupid like impose price controls or prop up failing corporations. But not this one. Not if the president and the congressional leadership can rouse themselves from their torpor. Not if they can bestir themselves to do something more than stand foursquare against “price gouging.”

Now is the time to demand that Congress passes a decent energy bill. Now is the chance to demand that we build some more oil refineries. Now is the chance to drill for oil in ANWR. Now is the chance to search for oil on the continental shelf off the west and east coasts. Now is the chance to rationalize the crazy quilt of gasolines blended for each individual city.

Of course the Democrats are demagoguing on energy. They demagogue on everything. Some day, in a quieter, more reflective time, there will be an opportunity to conduct a scholarly study to determine whether the Democrats of the twenty-first century actually believe in anything other than temporary partisan advantage. But this is not that time.

Now is the time to call the Democrats’ bluff on energy—not to mention border security, Iraq, and taxes. Is anyone paying attention? At the White House? Mr. President? Karl Rove? On Capitol Hill? Denny Hastert?

Nothing personal, you understand. It’s just that when we read in Time that the White House’s five point plan to save the Bush presidency doesn’t include a bullet point for high gas prices, we begin to wonder if anyone is home.

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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