Recent news about the advent of rapidly rising gas prices has brought the subject of energy into the forefront of public opinion.  Unfortunately, the majority of the discourse occurs over typical “political football” issues such as profits from oil companies and proposals for higher taxes.  Recently, the topic has shifted toward the topic of exporting domestically produced oil to other countries.  Naturally, this is being portrayed as unpatriotic greed on the part of the oil companies who are subverting the national interest of the United States for their own selfish …

A recent article by Victor Davis Hanson catalogs a trend of US sentiment returning to a peasant mentality that dominated the middle ages and still persists throughout much of Europe.  The hallmark of this mentality is a belief that when one person achieves wealth, it must have been taken away from somebody else.  This viewpoint is largely an artifact of medieval times when wealth consisted solely of land, livestock, and soldiers . . . and the only way that people gained wealth was to take it away from somebody else.
During …