Political Power Flowing from the Pump

Political Power Flowing from the Pump

By Timothy Birdnow

In one of the more ironic acts of political theatre we have witnessed,
Speaker Nancy Pelosi last Friday ordered the lights be shut off when
Republicans refused to leave the floor of the House of
Representatives, determined to continue the debate over offshore
drilling. Granted, Madam Speaker is often in the dark herself, but
the great irony here is that she used her control over energy to
stifle a debate about increasing energy supply.


One wonders if this display of power is not illustrative of a deeper
malady; a lust for control that transcends the normal political power
wrangling between parties. Control energy and you can control people.
Nancy Pelosi used her power over the lighting system to silence her
political opponents.


What are the basics, the fundamentals that a civilization requires?
Food, clean water, shelter, clothing, transportation, heating and
cooling, sanitation, lighting, are some of the major necessities that
people need to survive and prosper. Then there are the many luxuries;
telephones, televisions, computers, etc. What is the common thread?
In all cases, everything we have, our very civilization requires
energy. Every scrap of food, every stitch of clothing, every erg of
heat, every shelter, even our sewers and drainage ditches require
energy to make or to operate.


In primitive times that energy was supplied quite poorly, by the
oxidation of wood or animal fats or plant oils, and from wind and
water, and by the oxidation of carbohydrates in the human body and the
bodies of beasts. This energy ultimately comes from the Sun (as does
all energy except nuclear) and was difficult to control, although
primitive leaders often tried. Rivers could be dammed, fields
irrigated (or not), waterwheels could grind grain. (Keep in mind that
food is energy, and is measured in calories, or how much heat is
generated.) Egypt and Mesopotamia required serious irrigation for the
land to be fruitful, and so the local chieftains made themselves into
Pharaohs and Kings by control of that irrigation-control of the energy
needed by the people. Thus civilization was born.


Each step of human history has added levels of complexity and an
increase in the need for energy; Stone Age hunter-gatherers became
settled farmers, and the ages are named for their material sciences:
Paleolithic (old stone age) to Neolithic (new), Copper Age, Bronze
Age, Iron Age, Steel. With the increases in population and the need
for ever-more-complicated tools and techniques, governments have grown
enormously in order to regulate and coordinate the new technologies
and their uses. This growth of government turned elders to chieftains,
chieftains to kings, kings to emperors, community organizers to
Presidents (maybe). Government has become ever more intrusive as the
means to intrude have developed, and the ultimate basis of that power
is the control of energy usage.


That control is something those in government are loath to surrender,
and this returns us to the original point of this essay; the
Democrats, beholden to Big Environment, want to keep our energy
resources under lock and key. Part of their purpose is to reward high
dollar donors, but part of it is to maintain the kind of control that
powerful people crave, and that reformers in particular lust after.


Oil is the lifeblood of the post-modern era, and there isn`t a grain
of food, a stitch of clothing, a brick or board, that isn`t where it
is and in the form it takes without oil. Oil runs the machines that
plant the farmer`s seeds, runs the pumps that irrigate it, runs the
reapers that harvest it. The farmer`s produce is processed and
shipped via oil. We would all starve without it. This holds true for
just about everything in our society, yet many want to restrict our
right to oil. If government can control oil, it can control the
individual. Those who behave in certain ways, ways favored by the
energy masters will prosper, while those who are disobedient will
wither.


Which is interesting, considering the animus many Environmentalists
have against technology and high-energy industry. Many marry the green
cause in rebellion against the kind of domination that modernity
imposes on the individual. Yet their solution is to impoverish the
individual in the hopes of making our civilization less complex. Many
Greens believe that a simpler life would be better for individual
liberty, when that simplicity disenfranchises the people who are yoked
with it by reducing their abilities to control their own lives. The
ability to move about, for instance, is part of the freedom we enjoy,
and makes it harder for those who would circumscribe our liberties.
(That's why liberals hate automobiles; they offer the average person
the power to go where they will rather than where they are told.)
Trucks, trains, and aircraft allow us to buy goods from all over the
world, goods that are much cheaper than they would be if we had to
make them in the town where we live. People want and need things, and
making those things harder to acquire promotes only hardship, crime,
and warfare. How many wars were fought over material goods? Despite
what the Liberals claim, we have very few today. Why? Because we have
a cornucopia of material wealth, more than anybody needs and available
to most of us. Take this wealth away and people will fight over the
scraps. Environmentalists don`t understand that empowering the
government to fight ``big business`` to protect the environment will
likely lead to a far worse despoiling. One need only look at the
places where resources are controlled by governments like China and
Russia to see the stinking wastelands they have made.


But Liberals never grasp the consequences of their actions, and
gleefully turn to the government to manage resources in the interest
of ``fairness``. What is more fair? One group controlling all those
resources, or many? Free enterprise is fair enterprise.


Some Greens may be confused, but most on the Left are not, and that is
why they seek to restrict the flow of oil; they know that power flows
from a pump. They may talk about alternative energy, but they are
slow to actually embrace real alternatives (like nuclear). Nancy
Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barrack Obama realize the political danger of
continuing to do nothing about gas prices, but the alternative --
surrendering their control of energy -- scares them more. Remember,
the ``progressives`` went to Washington to fundamentally reorder
society. They believe they can build a new world, perfect Mankind and
America. How can they do that if they surrender the fundamental
mechanism for control? If America is to be reshaped in the image of
Our Messiah Obama, there must be a mechanism to force that change.
Control of energy is that mechanism.


But there`s the small problem of the electorate; the public is mad as
hell, and are demanding that something be done to reduce the price of
gasoline. A number of people have noticed that we have large assets
that remain untapped, or worse, that are now being tapped by other
countries, off our coasts. Republicans want to tap that source of
energy, and the Democrats, fearful of seeing their plans for change
derailed, have dug in their heels.


John Kerry accidentally spilled the beans with regard to Democratic
opposition to drilling in a debate with Joe Lieberman on Sunday`s Meet
the Press (Aug.3):


SEN. KERRY: We only have, we only have 3 percent of the world's oil
reserves. Sixty-five percent of the oil comes from the Mideast. The
problem with global climate change is oil. The problem for our
security is our dependency on oil.


MR. BROKAW: So what you're saying...


SEN. KERRY: If we go out and drill more oil, even temporarily, when it
doesn't come to the pump for about seven years, you're not dealing
with the real crisis, which is moving America's innovation...


SEN. LIEBERMAN: Well...


SEN. KERRY: ...and creativity, the creation of new fuel.


In short, Kerry is arguing that America must be forced in a direction
that most Americans don't want to go. The pain caused by high gas
prices is the tool he and other Democrats will use to make a
fundamental shift. They are quite willing to throw the forgotten man
under the Obama Express, and back the bus over Joe Sixpack several
times before leaving the scene of the crime. Being our betters, Those
Most Qualified, they are fully prepared to let us endure our pain so
they may mold America as they see fit. They are using energy to
control the populace. Their motives may be pure or may not (I would
argue not) but that is beside the point; they are stopping us from
getting energy to reshape our culture, an act of oppression.


(Notice, too, Kerry`s complete ignorance of how markets work; as long
as the OPEC cartel is the only game in town they can produce as much
or as little as they like, and charge accordingly. If we really get
in the game - or even threaten to get in the game -- the risk of
American oil taking money out of OPEC`s pockets will force them to
drill for more. They`ll have to react to a competitor, and competition
drives prices down.)


Energy usage is certainly a measure of wealth, and those who are
energy poor are poor. Wealth is a measure of power, and the poor are
rarely powerful. If the Democrats can restrict energy usage through
an energy "crisis", they can control the flow of wealth and the flow
of power. They instinctively understand this, and labor diligently to
make a reality of their plan, with what at first glance appears a very
confused energy policy. It`s not; the goal is to nationalize
resources, to break the power of the wealthy providers of energy and
draw it into their own bosoms. Remember Maxine Waters` call to
nationalize oil? Nationalizing energy is one of the first priorities
of tyrants. The ultimate goal of the Democrats' strategy is to
nationalize these resources.


So, when we see Pelosi turning the lights out on the House Republicans
to end debate, what we are really seeing is a lust for power, an
attempt to keep freedom out of the hands of the average American.
Pelosi`s "lights out" makes a chilling metaphor -- a symbolic "lights
out" for America. Do we want a nation where our betters guide us from
their high perches, where our ability to make and use energy is
circumscribed by a cadre of control freaks bent on reshaping how we
live to better please themselves? Drilling for oil seems to be a
straightforward proposition, but the implications for our future
society are staggering. We cannot allow the collectivists to lock up
our energy, lest all we hold dear should fade away in the general
brownout.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: some sound advice for george from hanson....
    ... >>you must control the oil fields as long as you are critically dependent ... >>further you cannot allow all the wealth resulting in oil to be spent upon ... the power of the net is being *vastly* under-estimated..... ... >>madsam had to be taken out....the rest is politics and rhetoric for the ...
    (uk.politics.misc)
  • Re: NOAA Global Warming Is Caused By Cows and Tree Huggers
    ... Peak Oil Hoax - The Energy Non-Crisis ... The following are small excerpts from chapters in Mr. Willims book 'The Energy ... first time we were told there was really an energy crisis. ... control energy, they can control industry, they can control an individual, and ...
    (sci.geo.geology)
  • Re: OT: Global warming strikes again.
    ... It's really about power. ... What we do have to do is to stop generating energy by burning fossil ... going to care if you go for windmills, solar cells, thermal solar, ... As oil gets scarcer and the economies of scale ...
    (sci.electronics.design)
  • taught witchcraft to exert shape for pain from memory of pain/abuse
    ... All the desire and craving to control things outside of her to a model ... Thus every act every moment forward in time is resulting from her pain ... my bad energy is a gimmick and a lie. ... She is mad for power over all things ...
    (rec.aviation.military)
  • Re: Bushs Jawboning Works! Saudis to Ramp Up Oil Production! Dems Screwed, Again!
    ... What did America do when America decided it needed a railroad? ... The Saudis & OPEC got the price of oil tripled. ... That Something Big on Energy that we need to do? ... Solar CANNOT power America. ...
    (alt.politics)