A crude remark

The word addiction has been thrown around a lot concerning America's dependence on imported oil and it's a word I take umbrage with. The idea/philosophy behind this word comes directly from the environmentalist camp and it is used as yet another way to disparage 'merica and capitalism. Let's examine the word a little more closely.

When someone is addicted to something, they are at the point where continued use of the substance has gone beyond whatever perceived value they ever received from it and it is now detrimental to their health. Although we depend upon foreign oil to an astounding degree, we are still getting at least incremental benefit from it in the form of a relatively productive economy (at least until fairly recently). That's not to say there isn't a LOT of waste, for there surely is, but using the word addiction smacks of gross, not to mention intentional, hyperbole.

One thing I'd like to ask the know-it-all experts and environmentalists is this: Could you send me tonight's lotto numbers? I mean, you pontificate (always in retrospect) on how the world should have known better than to become dependent on the single most powerful fuel source man has ever discovered that's also relatively safe and easy to use, one that saves thousands of man-hours per gallon, so you should have an inside track on the seeing future, right? You can't? Bummer.

Look, the point of all this is not to fall for the semantic infiltration of the environmentalist movement. Just like the misnomer "assault weapon" the anti-gunners have successfully insinuated into everyday parlance, environmentalists are using the word addiction to subtly skew the argument away from honest intellectual discussion and towards their bailiwick, obfuscation and emotionalism. Since no right-thinking person wants to be fingered as an addict, they will of course listen to environmentalism's pitch, and perhaps more than a few will be swayed.

In and of itself, this probably wouldn't be that big a deal, especially if it was confined to a small segment of the population. The problem is, it's not. The reason I am even posting on this is because I heard a snippet of some speech Obama gave recently where he was apparently chiding America's "addiction" to imported crude. This means that environmentalism's philosophy has reached, and been internalized by, the very person who could well be the next president of the United States. That means environmentalism would have a big, fat thumb on the delicate scale that balances individual rights and governmental abuse of those rights, and you can bet that thumb won't be on the side of the former.

Incidentally, I have no big love or hate of petroleum. It's a commodity that helped pull and propel the world world into the modern era, but if its heyday or peak has been reached, so be it. It was a hell of a ride while it lasted.

Take care.
DAL357