In the today’s opinion section, Thomas Friedman argues for a “Tea Party With a Difference" and in it he poses a very interesting argument. I really enjoyed: The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century and thought it was a good book and a good read. However I’ve come to disagree more and more with him.
In this opinion piece, Friedman argues the Tea Party should become the Green Tea Party and focus on saving the country from foreign oil and reach out to the environmental clubs such as The Sierra Club
I’d be happy to design the T-shirt logo and write the manifesto. The logo is easy. It would show young Americans throwing barrels of oil imported from Venezuela and Saudi Arabia into Boston Harbor.
Which is a great idea, to become energy independent and to get off foreign oil is not the way to do it. And he obviously doesn’t understand one of the tenants of the Tea Party: to eliminate as much of the government control and interference when he proposes how to get energy independent:
If we put a Patriot Fee on all of those imported barrels, we would use less, cease enriching bad regimes, strengthen our own dollar, make the air cleaner and the climate more stable, foster the exploitation of domestic and renewable energy sources, promote electric vehicles, help bring down the global price of oil (which hurts Iran and helps poor Africa), and we could use the revenue to shrink the deficit. It’s win, win, win, win, win, win …
I support a better environment, I support becoming energy independent. I do not support a tax that forces me to change my life. This is not how to get people to support energy independence, make it a choice, not a tax.