Comment on Jay Townsend for U.S. Senate: On Energy - Jay Townsend for New York

Jay Townsend for U.S. Senate: On Energy - Jay Townsend for New York

We need to drill for oil. We need to dig for coal. We need to extract from shale. We need to continue to develop the technologies that enable us to safely and cleanly produce more energy. We need to build nuclear plants, both large and secure and also the promising new small sealed and secure plants.

The synergies between our energy and national security issues are almost a cliche. Our other economic and social problems are also closely tied together. For over 50 years now, and especially since the oil embargo of 1973, we have allowed trillions of dollars to flow through the coffers of our enemies. This has proven to be a cancer that has corrupted our financial markets, and corrupted our politics and academics and intellectual professions. It has weakened not only our security but even more set our European and potentially Japanese allies on a spiral of self destructive compromise to blackmail. It has created conditions for a conflict with China that competes for the capital and physical resources we have ceded control over. It has even spread death and poverty through the Developing World in Africa and elsewhere due to the failure of the Green Revolution of the 1950s and '60s that depended on cheap fertilizers.

If we reject the path of failure that the Democrats have lead us down for over 40 years then we can restore the engine of the most productive and tolerant civilization in human history. We can triple the size of our armed forces. That will deter aggression and keep the peace. We can produce abundant energy that will undercut the power of the tyrants and bigots who profit from our dependence on foreign oil. We can restore our industrial sector while also providing meaningful trade that binds others to us and reduces poverty.

What we cannot do is restore our strength while deliberately undercutting the sources of innovation and liberty and pouring our treasure into wasteful vanity projects and self flagellation for hostile self appointed elites. The functions of the Federal government must be confined to those few enumerated areas granted it under the Constitution. All other regulatory and social activities must be eliminated.