As Imperial Japan threatened to conquer East Asia, President Roosevelt knew he could cripple their war machine with an oil embargo. Stop selling the Japanese fuel and their war machine would grind to a halt. Incensed by this, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and we joined World War II.
Roosevelt understood that valuable resources gave him power, and his actions spared Thais, Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipinos, Indonesians,and others from immeasurable suffering they would have endured if the invading Japanese army hadn’t been curtailed. (Armchair quarterbacks wanting to assassinate FDR’s character over Japanese internment may want to keep that in mind.)
But Roosevelt’s great example in leveraging the power of America’s energy wealth isn’t a lesson his heirs in the Democratic Party have learned. The piece of Roosevelt’s legacy they want to revive is the New Deal, Roosevelt’s signature domestic plan, but with a nice, shiny, coat of 21st century paint: it’s a “Green” New Deal.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez described the proposal as “a national, social, industrial and economic mobilization at a scale not seen since World War II” that provides “a sustainable environment for all for generations to come” while promoting “justice and equity.”
The generously titled “plan” has drawn undue attention despite the fact that no one really knows for sure what it is — as even Bloomberg was forced to acknowledge
One detail we have is that this deal, through a government invasion of every aspect of our lives, would transform us from one where renewable energy serves 11 percent of our needs to 100 percent!
As Institute for Energy Research president Tom Pyle noted, this promise “defies the laws of physics” and “would be impossible to achieve.” We have to trust that the Democratic Party will in fact do it by magic.
A similar war is being waged in Canada, where green protesters want to shut down the pipeline that (quite literally) fuels their economy. The fundamental problem is that the people who want to fund every crazy social program imaginable want to do it while annihilating the economic base that would provide for that.
Remember when President Obama promised, “Even if we drilled every drop of oil … it still wouldn’t be enough to meet our long-term needs”? Yet in 2018, America became a net oil exporter for the first time in 75 years. Last month, it was forecast that the U.S. would be energy independent by 2020, with oil production rising through the mid-2020s. But the most jaw-dropping laurel in President Trump’s incredible energy policy was that the U.S. was selling oil to the Middle-East!
With this energy wealth, our economy is stronger, more people are working, and life is better. It’s difficult to grasp for people who want to tear down the system, but the system seems to be working pretty well.
While one must acknowledge the good intentions of Ocasio-Cortez, her ignorance makes Sarah Palin sound like William F. Buckley (and probably doesn’t know who either of those two people are). She has no humility about the power she has stumbled into, and no wisdom about how to use that power. She has been catapulted to her national status based solely on the fact that she’s a reasonably attractive person of color with an unusual last name, and is arrogantly exploiting that platform with imbecilic promises about “fundamentally transforming” the United States.
It’s the most galling turn of events since, well, the same thing happened with Barack Obama.
With so many people falling in line behind this bartender-turned-congresswoman, we have to hope that not everyone in the Democratic Party will follow suit. Sen. Sherrod Brown (Ohio), a potential presidential contender, is a little more in touch with the party’s liberal roots, focus on blue collar workers and the dignity of work.
Liberal environmentalists blocking pipelines such as the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) are another example of Democrats prioritizing the Church of Environmentalism over people’s jobs. The ACP would create jobs for blue-collar workers in West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina while providing affordable natural gas for those communities.
It seems like helping working communities would be a better plan than “fundamentally transforming” an economy that so-called “new” Democrats barely understand.
Maybe reasonable Democrats can bring the party back to the center, which it needs. Self-admitted radicals like Ocasio-Cortez want a “mobilization not seen since World War II” that seems more likely to cripple our economy than anything else — while ignoring the reality that China is seeking to beat us at World War III.
If the former is forced upon is, the latter seems inevitable.
Jared Whitley served as press liaison for Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and as associate director in the White House under George W. Bush. He earned his MBA from Hult International Business School in Dubai.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.