The best response to the SOTU I’ve read so far is Sheldon Richman’s. How any free-marketeer can stand behind that speech is beyond me. Leftists should pay attention, too: Richman’s insights on energy policy deserve serious consideration by those whose rhetoric Bush has co-opted. You think our oil “addiction” is the problem, and state subsidization of alternative fuels is the answer? The U.S. government isn’t immersed in the Middle East because American consumers are jonesing for petrol. Our so-called addiction is merely a pretext for intervention – economic and military, at home and abroad – with tidy profits for crony capitalists as a side “benefit.” And as long as the state’s talons are sunk in the energy market, we’ll be sending troops to “secure our access” to the fuel du jour, whatever and wherever it is.
Come to think of it, oil isn’t the only thing the Middle East has in abundance. I can already hear another U.S. president in the not-too-distant future explaining why we must stop some backwater from nationalizing its solar panel fields – in the name of national security and democracy, of course.
