“We cannot drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times,” says Obama the Messiah. And, the masses say, “Obama! Obama! Obama!”

The forces of socialism are on the move. The times are ripe.

And no wonder. Having paid $3.99 per gallon for gas for the first time in my life this week, I did wonder if there are still a few patriots willing to declare, “Give me energy or give me death!” Or, have we all finally become sheep, succumbing to the central planners who will tell us where to work, where to live, how to get there, how to set the thermostat, etc.

Yes, our national psyche is at a “tipping point” as when Reagan asked us if we wanted to be a great nation again. I don’t hear Obama asking us that question. I think he has another vision. I think he wants to show America that it is not so great.

So, who is standing between me and the energy I want?

OPEC is an easy target, but for every question there is an answer that is easy and simple—and wrong.

In fact, OPEC has it own problem. As economist Benjamin Zycher opined, OPEC’s days are numbered due to the inevitable advance of progress and the immutable laws of economics:

Over the long run, real prices of natural resources and commodities usually fall, largely because of technological advances. Crude oil is no exception. Technological advances in seismic exploration have dramatically reduced the cost of finding new reserves, thus increasing oil reserves greatly. Horizontal drilling and other new techniques have reduced the cost of recovering known reserves. Also, improvements in technology provide both substitutes for oil and ways to use less oil to achieve given ends… Thus, the demand for crude oil is likely over the long term to decline relative to the demand for competing fuels. This has been the experience of mankind, as wood gradually gave way to coal, which in turn declined as the use of oil expanded. These facts suggest that the economic power of OPEC inexorably will erode.

Then who is standing between me and my energy? Theoretically, no one. In a free market substitutes for oil will be quickly and easily found because any overpriced good will cause entrepreneurs to find and consumers to use substitutes. This is the law of substitution. Unfortunately, our own leaders, wittingly or unwittingly, continue to implement barriers that frustrate the law of substitution. To badly overuse Walt Kelly’s theorem, the enemy is us—our own leaders.

If elected, Obama and his ilk will “fiddle” while our economy burns from high energy costs. Even worse, his administration will make real world decisions based on fantasies about our ability to affect climate change, set global energy policy and attain purely hypothetical energy technologies in the near term. Continued...