America needs a civics lesson, and the oil and gas industry should provide it.
Something is missing in a presidential campaign remarkable for the unpopularity of both major-party candidates and the many ways both validate that judgment.
Where is discussion about liberty?
Has it somehow become unfashionable to invoke this once-hallowed essential of American exceptionalism?
Republican Donald Trump promises to "make America great again."
Yet he says precious little about empowering individuals. He talks instead about building walls, suing critics, and jailing political opponents.
Democrat Hillary Clinton promises--among much else--debt-free college, universal and affordable health care, and jobs born of forced consumption of uneconomic energy.
Clinton would extend the dangerously imperious presidency of Barack Obama, while Trump, the supposed antidote for Obama's excesses, would just expand it in different directions.
Neither candidate asserts the virtues of limited government. Both are running for the fulsomely emergent position of US monarch.
For reasons both ideological and practical, the oil and gas industry should resist this affront to American ideals.
The ideological reason is that consolidation of power in the US Executive contradicts the Constitution and must be resisted.
The practical reason is that movement toward authoritarianism is bad for business.
Consumers free to choose inevitably prefer energy forms that are abundant, convenient, and affordable. Among thusly favored energy types, oil and natural gas always rank high.
When governments arrogate energy choice, oil and gas suffer. Energy consumers suffer, too.
Governments naturally yearn to control energy decisions. Control of anything as important to economic life as energy confers power over people. Governments crave power over people. That's why the US has its Constitution.
It's apparently because persuasive numbers of Americans have forgotten this that Republicans and Democrats chose Trump and Clinton as their candidates.
The US industry would help itself and its country by reminding Americans that they'll never achieve greatness by sending aspiring sovereigns to the White House. They achieve greatness by keeping liberty their unifying vision of national politics.
(From the subscription area of www.ogj.com, posted Oct. 14, 2016; author's e-mail: [email protected])
Bob Tippee | Editor
Bob Tippee has been chief editor of Oil & Gas Journal since January 1999 and a member of the Journal staff since October 1977. Before joining the magazine, he worked as a reporter at the Tulsa World and served for four years as an officer in the US Air Force. A native of St. Louis, he holds a degree in journalism from the University of Tulsa.
