Is George Will Right?

[Gipper]

Confident conservatives
By George Will
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/will123111.php3
In 2011, for the first time in 62 years, America was anet exporter of petroleumproducts. For the indefinite future, a specter is haunting progressivism, the specter of abundance. Because progressivism exists to justify a few people bossing around most people and because progressives believe that only government’s energy should flow unimpeded, they crave energy scarcities as an excuse for rationing — by them — that produces ever-more-minute government supervision of Americans’ behavior.
Imagine what a horror 2011 was for progressives as Americans began to comprehend their stunning abundance of fossil fuels — beyond their two centuries’ supply of coal. Progressives responded with attempts to impede development of the vast, proven reserves of natural gas and oil here and in Canada. They bent the willowy Obama todelay approval of the Keystone XL pipelineto carry oil from Canadian tar sands; they raised environmental objections to new techniques for extracting gas and “tight” oil from shale formations.
An all-purpose rationale for rationing in its many permutations has been the progressives’ preferred apocalypse, the fear of climate change. But environmentalism as the thin end of an enormous wedge of regulation and redistribution is a spent force. How many Americans noticed that the latest United Nationsclimate change confabulationoccurred in December in Durban, South Africa?

Is that not a perfect depiction of progressivism? This foolish ideology is all about instituting artificial scarcities for the benefit of the liberal elite. We can only hope that the Marxist environmental movement is in it's dying days.
More from Will's column...

Political logic suggests that this year Obama will try to rekindle the love of young voters with some forgiveness of student debts. But one-third of students do not borrow to pay college tuition. The average debt for those who do borrow to attend a four-year public institution is $22,000, and the average difference between the per-year earnings of college graduates and those with only a high school diploma is . . .$22,000.
It will be interesting to see how such a bailout of young and privileged borrowers will appeal to voters, who will begin to be heard from in Iowa. Before this year is many months old, discerning conservatives may decide that Obama probably has been rescued by the Republican nominating electorate and hence it is time to begin focusing on two things other than the 2012 presidential election. One is capturing the Senate. The other is preparing the ground for a better presidential nomination competition in 2016.
In any case, nothing that happens this November will bring an apocalypse. America had 43 presidencies before the current one and will have many more than that after the end of this one in 2013 or 2017. Decades hence, it will look like most others, a pebble in the river of U.S. history.

God forbide BO gets re-elected. But if he does, I find Will's belief that America will survive of little comfort.
What about you?

 

[dogtowner]

The GOP is slowing the descent Obama is pursuing but we are too close to the edge to survive another Obama term. Maybe if GOP controls all of Congress but we NEED to turn things around now.

And yes it is a perfect description of the left creating artificial shortages via government.

 

[steveox]

G.O.P needs another 40+ seats in the house and 13+ seats in the senate. Then theres nothing Mr Obama can do about it. He can dictate the world but he cant dictate our government.