[Industrialblog,
November 22, 2006]
On Islam's confrontation of the West
Response to this. Go read it and come back, if you like.
I grew up during the Cold War, and recall the profound pessimism of the West and especially Western intellectuals during the 70s. The press beat out its negativity every day -- we were losing the Cold War, our economy was shot, things were not going to get better (I'm not kidding -- I have a few books that said things were simply not going to get better, economically, in the West). We were DOOMED.
I was profoundly affected by this. When President Reagan came along, and switched our country to the economics of Milton Friedman, peace be upon him, all that pessimism turned out to be a lie. What surprised me was that liberals didn't take the lesson (even me). It wasn't until the Wall came down in November 1989 that I got it -- Reagan had been right all along. The West had dramatically underestimated its strength ... we had simply crushed the Soviets under an economic juggernaut.
And liberals did something shocking. After decades of relentless doom-mongering, they changed tactics: They said the Soviets were never a real threat and of course we would beat them. That's when I began to understand that most left-liberals were not merely wrong, that they were mentally sick. Arguing in the alternative is fine for defense lawyers -- but not for public intellectuals trying to explain public events.
Perhaps I'm conflating two groups of people ... by liberals, I'm talking about a certain kind of liberal, not all.
By the time Bill Clinton came around, some liberals had gotten it. Clinton was one -- he was an optimistic guy, with a ready smile, and a belief in the future and the United States. He didn't touch the economics, except to work with Congress to be more fiscally responsible, and combined with a few other factors, road an economic boom.
Anyway, in the past few years, one thing that worries mean is the return of this Defeatism. I find myself prone to it, too. We look at our divisions and our weaknesses in the West, and the skill of our opponents in exploiting them. And it's both the Left and Right and Middle who have defeatists.
But are we seriously going to lose to Muslims? Or are we going to steamroll them economically and culturally and afterward, listen to people saying that the Islamic threat was always overblown?
That is, as in the Cold War, we may lose battle after battle and all our intentional efforts may come to nought. But I wonder if our unintentional efforts -- that is, the fact that we're all at work today being productive and arguing with one another and selling this and that -- I wonder if in the end that will just bury them.
Don't get me wrong. The Muslims have us over a barrel, just as Gates of Vienna says. Cheap oil. Until we have energy independence, they have a serious weapon against us ... they can inflict severe economic pain on us, and relieve that pain as well. And they have used that leverage just as a good behaviorist would.
That's why I've come around to the belief that our No. 1 national priority must be energy independence. Right now there's an Israeli company that alleges it can create shale oil at $17 a barrel. Granted, we don't know just how environmentally friendly they're being, but we have in Colorado shale oil reserves that are at least three times the known Saudi reserves. (Coal-to-diesel is another option -- and we have plenty of coal, just in Montana). We can, within five to 10 years, become energy independent and remain energy independent for decades, if not a century, just from our known reserves in Colorado.
Anyway, I doubt we'll do it until we're forced. We have to remove that leverage ... and once we do, we'll see that we're free to conduct foreign policy as we see fit.
As it says in Gates of Vienna, it's important not to overestimate the enemy, just as it's important not to underestimate him. Muslims add very little to the world, are essentially parasitic to the west, and deprived of their oil revenues, don't have a lot of options.
FWIW. YMMV.
I grew up during the Cold War, and recall the profound pessimism of the West and especially Western intellectuals during the 70s. The press beat out its negativity every day -- we were losing the Cold War, our economy was shot, things were not going to get better (I'm not kidding -- I have a few books that said things were simply not going to get better, economically, in the West). We were DOOMED.
I was profoundly affected by this. When President Reagan came along, and switched our country to the economics of Milton Friedman, peace be upon him, all that pessimism turned out to be a lie. What surprised me was that liberals didn't take the lesson (even me). It wasn't until the Wall came down in November 1989 that I got it -- Reagan had been right all along. The West had dramatically underestimated its strength ... we had simply crushed the Soviets under an economic juggernaut.
And liberals did something shocking. After decades of relentless doom-mongering, they changed tactics: They said the Soviets were never a real threat and of course we would beat them. That's when I began to understand that most left-liberals were not merely wrong, that they were mentally sick. Arguing in the alternative is fine for defense lawyers -- but not for public intellectuals trying to explain public events.
Perhaps I'm conflating two groups of people ... by liberals, I'm talking about a certain kind of liberal, not all.
By the time Bill Clinton came around, some liberals had gotten it. Clinton was one -- he was an optimistic guy, with a ready smile, and a belief in the future and the United States. He didn't touch the economics, except to work with Congress to be more fiscally responsible, and combined with a few other factors, road an economic boom.
Anyway, in the past few years, one thing that worries mean is the return of this Defeatism. I find myself prone to it, too. We look at our divisions and our weaknesses in the West, and the skill of our opponents in exploiting them. And it's both the Left and Right and Middle who have defeatists.
But are we seriously going to lose to Muslims? Or are we going to steamroll them economically and culturally and afterward, listen to people saying that the Islamic threat was always overblown?
That is, as in the Cold War, we may lose battle after battle and all our intentional efforts may come to nought. But I wonder if our unintentional efforts -- that is, the fact that we're all at work today being productive and arguing with one another and selling this and that -- I wonder if in the end that will just bury them.
Don't get me wrong. The Muslims have us over a barrel, just as Gates of Vienna says. Cheap oil. Until we have energy independence, they have a serious weapon against us ... they can inflict severe economic pain on us, and relieve that pain as well. And they have used that leverage just as a good behaviorist would.
That's why I've come around to the belief that our No. 1 national priority must be energy independence. Right now there's an Israeli company that alleges it can create shale oil at $17 a barrel. Granted, we don't know just how environmentally friendly they're being, but we have in Colorado shale oil reserves that are at least three times the known Saudi reserves. (Coal-to-diesel is another option -- and we have plenty of coal, just in Montana). We can, within five to 10 years, become energy independent and remain energy independent for decades, if not a century, just from our known reserves in Colorado.
Anyway, I doubt we'll do it until we're forced. We have to remove that leverage ... and once we do, we'll see that we're free to conduct foreign policy as we see fit.
As it says in Gates of Vienna, it's important not to overestimate the enemy, just as it's important not to underestimate him. Muslims add very little to the world, are essentially parasitic to the west, and deprived of their oil revenues, don't have a lot of options.
FWIW. YMMV.
Some big problems exist, but the question is how we can get capitalism to rule the day. Until oil becomes more expensive, there will continue to be limited unless we make big tax incentives and/or otherwise seed the effort.
Two thoughts.
1) Living in Colorado - I read a lot in the local papers about shale. In the last year I've heard 3 different sets of numbers on product cost per barrel, ranging between $40 to $200. The Israeli $17 sounds amazing if true.
2)I've got a good friend who's a Moslem woman I've known for 10 years. I know most of her family as well. Now, they're not Arabs, they're from Pakistan (but her husband is from North Africa). The way she explains it to me is that generally speaking within a generation of immigration to America, the Moslem women are out of the veil and ordering the men around (much the way it happens in regular American families). They Americanize, if you will. It reminds me of the reports(specualtion?) after 9/11 of the Al-Quaeda sleeper agents who just kept on sleeping - they'd gone native and become - well - us.
Perhaps it's easier to keep the zealots fired up when they're poor, hungry and angry.
I wonder if there's a parallel to make to the early religious immigrants who came to New England to set up a strict religious utopia and were eventually secularized by increasing prosperity.
I think that they were actually secularized by dying and being replaced by their children (and grand-children, etc), who weren't self-selected to be super-dedicated religious folk.
Energy independence is nearly pointless, unless you plan to start supplying the entire world. Suppose we become completely self-sufficient, then do something and oil octuples in price. China and the rest of the world which isn't oil-independent goes into a horrible economic depression, and will all of our trading partners' economies going down Mr. Toilet, so does our economy.
So long as oil is used by most of the world, the middle east has us by the proverbial external reproductive equipment because most of the world is our friend.
that's a valid opinion.
There is also a school of thought regarding Colonial New England and the Puritans that holds that the increased economic prosperity brought by farming, the triangle trade etc secularized that culture.
I'm pretty sure China doesn't like be dependent upon foreign oil any more than we do.
But most of the oil independence talk isn't about going nuclear, using hydrogen in place of gasoline, etc. It's about finding native oil reserves (which are not currently extractable economically given current technology &environmentalist aggressiveness), or turning coal into oil. That is, stuff that's all local to America.
It's not like an installation to tap the colorado oil sands is going to do China much good unless they plan to invade us. :)
I personally hope that these people will eventually help with energy independence, which is something that we could share. But I'm not holding my breath.
You are correct. I am just a dreamer in this area (as opposed to my usual "realist" position).
I think there are short term goals and long term goals in terms of energy production. Coal -> gas production and shale oil will become economically feasible at some point, which, in essence, puts some limit on what OPEC nations can charge. If we really went for it, we'd get the costs further down. That's the nature of innovation.
In terms of US energy dependence, I would still like to see us pursue nuclear energy or anything that keeps us from importing oil from Venezuela or the Middle East. This is part security motivated and environmentally oriented.
In the long run, if the US is the first to master renewable energy and/or fusion, we'll not only be safer - we'll have a lot of clout with other nations. It is win-win for us. (Though I have no idea what it might cost, I just assume it is possible).
Also - we don't really have a choice - fossil fuels are finite if still vast. So sooner or later, we'll have to move away from fossil fuels.
In the short run, I hate seeing our money rolling into the pockets of extremists who turn around and use that money to kill us (all in the name of religious no less). I'm not too found of seeing $s flowing endlessly into China, but I can see how that is a bit different. So, I buy into Bill's position a great deal: our No. 1 national priority must be energy independence.
I don't trust nuclear power at all ... and want it phased out.
I think the long term renewable solution is geo-thermal. The earth is a giant molten ball surrounded by a thin crust of mostly water. It's practically a steam engine already ...
Yes, the perfect can be the enemy of the good. But national energy independence as you describe it isn't much of a good. It has few practical effects, since our foreign policy would be more or less just as constrained as before — plunging the world into a huge and long lasting economic great depression is hardly a viable option.
You're right that there's such a thing as the perfect being the enemy of the good, but there's also such a thing as "not good enough". I'm not looking for perfection, but I do want measures which have significant real value, as opposed to purely symbolic value.