Particularly since gas prices hovered near $4.00 per gallon last summer it has been true that ENERGY ISSUES have been making for strange bedfellows. Traditionally the purview of the left, in the last few years there has been a greater outcry within the Defense community about the deleterious effects of America’s dependence on foreign oil.

Reflecting the military’s understanding of the national security implications, in the last few years we’ve seen theDefense Science Board Task Force Report on DOD Energy Strategy, two Center for Naval Analysis reports—National Security and Threat of Climate Change  and Powering America’s Defense: Energy and the Risks to National Security -- and the 2008 Joint Operating Environment Challenges and Implications for the Future Joint Force.

These documents make the case in no uncertain terms that the use of fossil fuels (particularly oil from antagonistic foreign states) and our national electrical infrastructure are issue of critical national security. From the latter CNA report:

• US dependence on oil weakens international leverage, undermines foreign policy objectives, and entangles America with unstable or hostile regimes.
• Inefficient use and overreliance on oil burdens the military, undermines combat effectiveness, and exacts a huge price tag—in dollars and lives.
• US dependence on fossil fuels undermines economic stability, which is critical to national security.
• A fragile domestic electricity grid makes our domestic military installations, and their critical infrastructure, unnecessarily vulnerable to incident, whether deliberate or accidental.

Yesterday the US House of Representatives passed the Waxman-Markey Climate Change legislation. There is much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth over this development. The debate is not indicative of bad science. The debate is indicative of bad politics.

I haven’t got the first clue whether or not increasing global temperatures are caused by human activity. Global temperatures are getting warmer. There’s little debate on that. Rather, the debate centers on the cause and even within the scientific community there seems to be significant variance in opinion on this matter. There are many people with lots of letters after their names that can’t come to any consensus. For me to weigh in on the science of the issue would be preposterous in the extreme (I might as well start telling you that child-birth is painless because it didn’t hurt ME). Yet, Americans around the country are doing just that—flaunting their ignorance by parroting only the scientists they choose to believe without any real understanding of the science. Their opinions have more to do with the radio station they listen to and less to do with an understanding of the issues.

Those very same dynamics are at work in our Congress. Georgia Republican Paul Broun said that climate change is nothing but a “hoax” that has been “perpetrated out of the scientific community.” The debate on this legislation has become a referendum on the science of climate change and not about the broader issue of changing America’s energy paradigm. Our problems with electricity and fuel can be discussed in terms of terrorism, homeland security, the economy, jobs, national defense, foreign policy, American exceptionalism, innovation, family values, immigration, and national security. These are all bedrocks of the Republican platform. And I never mentioned the weather.

The debate on the science behind Waxman-Markey dumbs down any discussion on America’s future. Because America’s security and economic future is dependent on the changes we make to our understanding and use of electricity and fuel.

Republicans have long been seen as the Party of the US military yet Republican politicians still eschew the ideological consensus that is forming within the Pentagon—that change (nay, progress) must come in America’s energy appetite.

If the Republicans would put on their “big-boy panties” for a minute the buffoonery on the House floor might have been replaced with a vibrant, educated, paradigm-shifting discussion on why every American citizen needs to bear some of the burden in changing the way we power our lives. Democrats could have talked about the weather.Republicans could have talked about our sons and daughters dying on the fields of battle to ensure the supply of fuel for America’s SUVs with the yellow “Support Our Troops” ribbon on the rear window.

There are some who don’t believe Waxman-Markey goes far enough. No one believes the bill is perfect; it’s not even close. If anyone unhappy with the bill is waiting for something perfect, forget it. For the Congress to create, in its first attempt, a bill that was effective and without fault would take a miracle of biblical proportions. This will simply be step one. Lessons will be learned and future amendments and legislation will address Waxman-Markey’s shortcomings. Progress will be incremental. But it does represent progress in changing the way Americans view fuel and electricity.

I support Waxman-Markey. Not because I believe in the human contribution to climate change, but because I believe that making adjustments to the way Americans view and use energy is the common thread in keeping America the greatest nation on earth for the next century.

I haven’t really looked this morning but I assume others are already saying what I’ve been ruminating since I heard about the Steve McNair shooting. So let me say it now—I don’t think this is going to end well for McNair’s reputation.

After the news broke yesterday, ESPN radio was filled with people commenting on what a great guy McNair was.  Steve’s brother, Fred, commented, “It's still kind of hard to believe. He was the greatest person in the world. He gave back to the community. He loved kids and he wanted to be a role model to kids.”

All of which may be true. But I’ve become so jaded and cynical on celebrity deaths there’s simply no way for me to look at the facts as they’ve been presented so far and not conclude McNair was having an affair with the 20 year old Sahel Kazemi.

Here’s what we’ve been told so far: McNair and Kazemi knew each other from a restaurant the quarterback and his family frequented.  There is a 2007 Cadillac Escalade registered to Kazemi AND McNair. Witnesses say McNair arrived at a condominium he owns between 1:30 and 2:00 am Saturday. They say Kazemi was already at the condo.

Those facts alone would put most marriages in serious jeopardy.

Hey, maybe Steve and Shahel were planning the church bazaar. There are as many acceptable scenarios as there are illicit scenarios.

McNair, though, was discovered with multiple gunshot wounds, one to head. Kazemi had been shot once.

Multiple gunshot wounds sounds like a crime of passion to me. If you’re stealing a DVD player and the family penny jar, you don’t inflict multiple gunshot wounds—you fire once or twice and flee.

Eddie George, the former Tennessee Titans running back, played with McNair and spoke on ESPN radio yesterday.  He was filled with praise for McNair and the way he lived his life. I simply felt bad for Eddie. I wondered how he will feel if the foreshadowed circumstances come to fruition.

Am I bad person to think like this? In the middle of one family’s tragedy all I can do is imagine the consequences of purely hypothetical and tawdry events.

Adding to my self-loathing was my contempt for those who called, emailed and texted the ESPN radio host.  Fans poured out the grief: “We’ll never forget Steve.” “This is such a sad loss for America.”  “I’m devastated.”

Really? This is a guy who played football. If he hadn’t been a professional athlete we never would have heard of him. America’s fascination with playing the role of the drama queen is well documented. “How will we go on without Michael Jackson?” (Woe is me.)  You’ll buy someone else’s music.

ESPN’s radio host at least had the most relevant reason to grieve—a 36 old man was shot to death. That is too young to die. Indeed it is. But I’m sorry, 36 year old black men are shot in this country by the dozen and there’s little outrage. The feigned grief over McNair’s soon-to-come-to-light Shakespearean ending is hypocritical--unless you want to use him as a public face for a national tragedy.

McNair’s death IS sad. But it’s not EXTRA sad because he was famous. WE are EXTRA sad because we apparently place more value on the life of the famous Steve McNair than on Laquinn Tucker, a 37-year-old black man, who was shot several times and died June 5.; or Steve Moore, a 39-year-old black man who was stabbed in the chest and died June 2; or  Perry Wilson, a 36-year-old black man who was shot and died June 20.

The sad part is that, if my cynical, jaded prediction is correct, McNair’s actions will have brought about an extreme over-reaction from someone. He will have been in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person. He will have fooled his family and friends. These are all very sad events.

I feel bad that I think like this, but honestly I don’t know how any relatively well-informed American could conclude otherwise, Truly, I hope I’m wrong. But aren’t we ALL sitting around today waiting for the other shoe to drop?

But let’s not make more of his death than it really is.  One man. One sad story. One death. Let’s hide our hypocrisy and keep our self-indulgent grief to ourselves.

What is it that’s all the talk in the world of American finance these days? I’ll give you a few seconds....what have you been hearing a lot of? What are you and your family talking about? 

Let me give you a clue:  Is it that you’ve got to spend, spend, spend to help the economy recover?  Nope, and now you’ve got it, don’t you? 

All the talk is about saving. CNN reported on June 28 that consumer saving is now up to an average of $42/week per household, the highest savings rate since 1994.  The June 20, 2009, issue of US News and World Report featured an article by Kimberly Palmer entitled Frugal Forever. 

Apparently, it’s only the US consumer that’s in on the action, though. Our federal government is going on a shopping spree the likes of which we haven’t seen since President Reagan oversaw the largest increase in government spending (as a portion of GDP) in American history.  But Reagan bought STUFF.  President Obama and his sorely out-of-touch cohorts in Congress are a decade behind the times when it comes to spending habits—spending like they’re preparing to be on Lifestyle of the Rich and Famous and their buying entire INDUSTRIES. 

Michael Lind, the director of the New America Foundation’s Economic Growth Program, wrote in the May/June issue of Foreign Policy that “….the post-crisis financial sector will be downsized and more heavily regulated, nationally and internationally…..We can also comfortably wager that government subsidies will rule the day….State capitalism with American characteristics may emerge from the de facto nationalization of the US automobile industry and perhaps other sectors that need to be rescued as the wave of deleveraging works its way through the economy….Millions of [formerly] affluent people are realizing that they will depend more, not less, on public pensions like social security…” 

That doesn’t sound like any “New America” I want to be a part of and its not the kind of New America US citizens are looking to create. Now, more than ever, the US needs truly authentic conservative leadership. Not the kind of Republican leadership that has been mis-identified with conservatism for decades. This kind of conservatism leads to article headlines like those found on FoxNews: FRUGAL AMERICANS HURT ECONOMIC RECOVERY. That kind of Republican, “Oh dear, look how big business is suffering,” conservatism bears little resemblance to the conservatism that is based on the idea of CONSERVING.

 
It's hard to believe that true conservatives would want to CONSERVE their money, I know. But there it is—I said it. They’d also like to conserve the American ideals of a free market economy, not a federal government engorged and nauseated on the unchewed consumption of spoiled American industry that should have remained on the buffet table in the first place. 

Most Americans say the want “smaller government” but only so much as the programs important to the person being asked are not the ones to be downsized.  But today Americans are appropriately curbing their appetite for fiscal consumption. Americans are learning the difference between “want” and “need.”  

Yet our national leaders are still assuming that the things we “wanted” six months ago are the things we “need” today. Why is it that while consumers have the wherewithal to do the things we must do, our representatives don’t share our fortitude? 

The Republican Party clearly needs re-branding. What we’re getting now from Washington is exactly what we should have expected from a Democratic President and Congress.  But I still don’t see any real signs that a significant conflagration will rage across the old Republican Party, laying waste to the dead and rotten ideas that have come to choke the forest of politics and make room for new ideological sprouts.  Where is conservatism pollinating in the first place? To whom should we look for someone brave enough to tell America “No” at a time when we desperately need it? 

I have no answers (they’re certainly not in South Carolina) but I know the wellspring from which the right answers will come: true conservatism. Individuals who understand what has made America great. Individuals with the courage to do the right thing even when it’s unpopular. Individuals who are willing to be progressive in their pursuit of new ways to make the America work for Americans. 

The Republican Party lost in November. It lost because it became like the Democrats and couldn’t do what they do as well as they do it.  Republicans make for inferior Democrats and that’s the lesson of this election. Stop trying to beat the Democrats are their game. The Democrats are reacting to problems that are already a year or more old. They are not being progressive and proactive. They are being reactive. 

I’ve always found it interesting that conservatism seeks to conserve that which liberalism brought about. Our founding fathers threw off their government, chucked organized religion and staged a revolution—not many things more liberal than that. Yet it was their action in pursuit of grand ideas that birthed the world’s greatest experiment in self-governance: an experiment that is jeopardized by ideological stagnation. 

Americans need conservatism now more than ever.

So with the ideas of Atlantic Monthly's contributors and Mike Wallace's collection in my head, let me share with you my radical vision of the world in 2058.

Have you got a window? Open it. Look outside. This is the world in 2058. Much as the man in 1958 might feel if he looked out his window and saw our world, that is how we will feel in 2058. Sure, our world is snazzed up a bit from 1958--the '58 Chevy has been replaced by the Prius and in 50 years, the Prius will be replaced with a ChryFiat Quest. Whatever.

It's fun and sexy to imagine that all our technological dreams will come true. But neither science nor policy is sufficient to facilitate such a rapid transformation. And face it, our perspective is skewed. Across time I can think of only one 50 year period in which the world changed so dramatically that it might render a time traveler completely flummoxed and that is the period spanning the start of the 20th century.

One of my favorite questions when I hosted a talk radio show centered on this story. Life in 1893 was virtually unchanged from the dawn of man. While the industrial revolution was just getting started its effects were not yet far reaching. Most of the world was still engaged in subsistence living--people burned candles to see and fires to cook. They rode horses to work and to do errands.

Our perspective is out of wack. We expect that the world will continue to adapt in that manner. I simply don't see it. The period of transformation of the last 100 years is an aberration. It's like a makeover for a homely girl--an incredible metamorphosis into something new and wonderful, but she can't do another makeover every month and realize similar gains. The law of diminishing returns prohibits it.

If I have one prediction it is this: I optimistically believe the world will be filled with war and strife.

"Optimistic," Drex?

Indeed.

Today, we see the spread of distributed power generation. Renewable sources like solar and wind power are popping up all over the world. A small solar panel and a laptop bring all the ideas of the world to any village on the planet. Villagers can access virtually any bit of information. That information will power new service industries which will equip villages with money, but more importantly it will show them what the Jones's have. This will be nation-building in 2058. We will literally empower a village and let knowledge do its work. As these ideas take hold and global citizens, too long on the outside of democratic processes and capitalistic opportunities, will go to war to get what's theirs.

It will be a sign of American success when the suppressed rise up and fight for their own liberty. That is the only sustainable liberty in the first place. It is what the US should seek in its efforts to spread democracy. Not to MAKE democracies by force but to make possible democracies by knowledge. The success of our efforts will be made manifest as revolutions ripple across Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Ray Kurzweil also postulated that life expectancy in 2058 will increase by a year every year. So with any luck at all I'll still be around in 2058 to have this article thrown in my face when the world is fully at peace for the first time in its history. Of course, if Kim Dae-jung is right, you can call me a moron without ever opening your mouth.