As Energy Prices Rise, It's All Downhill for Democracy-Friedman, NY Times

[Coastie for Truth]

In case you haven't noticed, all the oil-rich bad guys seem to be having a fine and dandy time these days.

Iran, awash in oil money, thumbs its nose at U.N. demands for it to desist in its nuclear adventures and daily threatens to wipe Israel off the map. President Vladimir Putin of Russia, awash in oil money, jails his opponents at home and cozies up to America's opponents, like Iran and Hamas, abroad. Sudan, awash in oil money, ignores the world's pleas to halt its genocide in Darfur. Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez, awash in oil money, regularly tells America and his domestic opponents to take a hike. And Nigeria, Uzbekistan, Angola, Saudi Arabia, Chad and Syria, all flush with oil or gas, are comfortably retreating from even baby steps of democratization.

There is a pattern here. Many people assumed that with the fall of the Berlin Wall, we were going to see an unstoppable wave of free elections and free markets slowly spread across the globe. For a decade that wave seemed, indeed, to be real and powerful. But as the world has moved from an oil price range of $20 to $40 per barrel to a range of $40 to $70 a barrel, a very negative counterwave has arisen.

What I would call "petro-ist" states — highly dependent on oil or gas for their G.D.P. and having either weak institutions or outright authoritarian systems — have started asserting themselves. And they are weakening, for now at least, the global democratization trend.

Economists have long taught us about the negative effects that an overabundance of natural resources can have on political and economic reform in any country: the "resource curse." But when it comes to oil, it seems that you can take this resource curse argument a step further: there appears to be a specific correlation between the price of oil and the pace of freedom. I call it the "First Law of Petropolitics," and it posits the following: The price of oil and the pace of freedom always move in opposite directions in petro-ist states.

<<<Snip>>>

An interesting complement is Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Leon de Winter's ,

The radical jihadist threat cannot be resolved on the battlefield. And because distrust of Western ideas and values is deeply and widely felt across the Muslim world, with roots going back centuries, the war for hearts and minds cannot be won by satellite TV, radio broadcasts or public diplomacy. It can only be won when the Muslim world evolves its own civil society to displace the tribal mentalities that still rule today.

Until then, the West must fight radicalism with radicalism — radically reducing its reliance on the Arab oil that fuels the global jihad.

<<<snip>>>
Absent the development of a vigorous civil society — which we in the West can try to spur but cannot dictate the pace of — what effective course can we take?

The ideology of radical Islam cannot be defeated by Western military power, but it can be defeated by another power: by the power of creative and inventive Western minds.

In his State of the Union speech earlier this year, President George Bush properly noted America’s oil addiction, but he left the essential point unsaid: This addiction is financing the roadside bombs in Iraq, the development of the Iranian A-bomb, the suppression of women and the proliferation of radical mosques.

With the threat of an Iranian nuclear bomb becoming an ever closer reality, the countries of the free world have to urgently set an ambitious goal: In five years they need to devise a way to cut off dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Just as John F. Kennedy had his goal of man in space, just as the Manhattan Project led within three years to the defeat of Japan with the invention of an unprecedented weapon, so, too, the Western nations must initiate an urgent program to develop an effective, affordable oil-free energy source.

<<<snip>>>
- it is definitely worthwhile

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the Somali-born Dutch legislator and women's rights activist who is co-author of the film "Submission," about women and Islam, which led to the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Muslim radical. Leon de Winter is the Dutch novelist whose books include "About the World's Emptiness."

[Vinnie From Indy]

1. Friedman is an idiot of the first order

I guess he abandoned his "flat world" economic bit of nonsense. WOW! Who knew it was that simple? Invent a word and BAM you have a new philosophy to pimp. Who wants to bet that Friedman will have a book with a silly title like "Petro-ist Pandemic" coming out soon?

One thing that jumps out at me from Friedman's piece is that he seems genuinley pissed that guys like Chavez and others have stood up and said thanks for raping our country for all these years, but we have had enough.

I do agree that hybrid cars and civil society are part of the solution to many of mankind's immediate ills.

[Coastie for Truth]

4. Soft Coal Country

Get a good map - I am from that world along and between I-70 and US 40 - Green and Fayette Counties Pennsylvania -- and Monongalia and Preston Counties West Virginia -- soft coal country - where Pittsburgh and Morgantown are the "Big Cities".

When I was a kid our garage collapsed into a mine sink hole -- and the men in the town died young - of Black Lung.

My Dad was a United Mine Workers of America union lawyer in the coal fields.

And I went to a grad school that was a "College of Engineering and MINES"

I have seen what the mineral exploitation barons do to the working men in the coal fields and oil patches - and their families - and the land.

While I think Tommie has a propensity to be a jerk -- I think the mineral exploitation industry barons are just another incarnation of the Bush Crime Family - coal or oil - it don't matter.

[Kolesar]

5. I used to paddle there

The Yough, the Cheat, the N Branch of the Potomac. Have you been following the mountain top removal stories?

[Skink]

2. I agree with Friedman but...

3 dollar gas is enough to spur change, 4 dollar gas an undue burden on all of us.

[stopbush]

3. Thanks for enabling this to happen, Tommy Boy.

Funny how we award-deprived commoners knew this would happen back in 2000
when asshole got selected. Too bad we don't have the knack for nuance that
writers like Tommy Boy exhibit when lives are on the line.

[NNadir]

6. Sometimes I just wish Freidman would get a real job.

[woodstockny]

7. Our European friends are laughing at us

for complaining about $3 gas.