It Is A Hard Thing

It Is A Hard Thing For Intellectuals To Acknowledge Benefits From Their Rich Moral Inferiors Who Never So Intended It.

Gas Prices In Many Parts Of The Country Are Nearing $4 A Gallon; It Could Get Even Worse As Unrest Spreads Throughout The Oil-exporting Middle East. Yet The Obama Administration Once Again Seems To See No Crisis. It Has Curtailed New Leases For Offshore Oil Exploration For Seven Years And Exempted Thousands Of Acres In The West From New Drilling. It Will Not Reconsider Opening Up Small Areas Of Alaska With Known Large Oil Reserves.

California Is Now A Valuable Touchstone To The Country, A Warning Of What Not To Do. Rarely Has A Single Generation Inherited So Much Natural Wealth And Bounty From The Investment And Hard Work Of Those More Noble Now Resting In Our Cemeteries-and Squandered That Gift Within A Generation.

It Is Rather The Nature Of America - Our Freewheeling, Outspoken, Prosperous, Liberty-loving Citizens Extend Equality To Women, Homosexuals, Minorities, And Almost Anyone Who Comes To Our Shores, And Thereby Create Desire And With It Shame For That Desire. Indeed, It Is Worse Still Than That: Precisely Because We Worry Publicly That We Are Insensitive, Our Enemies Scoff Privately That We In Fact Are Too Sensitive - What We Think Is Liberality And Magnanimity They See As License And Decadence. If We Don't Have Confidence In Who We Are, Why Should They?

The Problem With Deterrence - Apparently Sometimes Forgotten By Our Former Presidents - Is That It Is Not Static, But A Creature Of The Moment, Captive To Impression, And Nursed On Action, Not Talk. It Must Be Maintained Hourly And Can Erode Or Be Lost With A Single Act Of Failed Nerve, Despite All The Braggadocio Of Threatened Measures. And, Once Gone, The Remedies Needed For Its Restoration Are Always More Expensive, Deadly - And Controversial - Than Would Have Been Its Simple Maintenance.