Solving America's Energy Crisis

Book excerpt: There are some remarkable parallels between the Watergate scandals and the energy crisis—the two biggest front-page stories in recent months. Both are the product of a politics of fear and intimidation, a use of power to obscure public issues with scare words like black-outs and Black Panthers, while stealing Americans blind. In the name of law-andorder, the Watergate tricksters nearly stole the government. In the name of supply-and-demand, the energy companies would have us finance their attempt to further monopolize the world's energy resources. But more of us are seeing through these kinds of tricks. On a national level, perhaps television has produced a more sophisticated audience, one capable of discerning a second-rate used car salesman or a fast buck hoax in an instant. That's certainly ironic considering the way TV has become the media for presidental campaigning and the oil companies' good-guy apologies. Of course, Southerners should have a slight edge in spotting a fraud. After all, we've had decades of demagogues and statehouse gangs. telling us what was best for "the little people." Not that we've had a monopoly on such corruption. Nationally, the worst enemies of democracy and free enterprise consistently prove to be those who claim to be those systems' protectors. Still, the South has a special relation to these latest crises. And that's what this issue of our journal is all about. There is increasing evidence that the cronies and the cash that made Watergate a Nixon policy came from the southern USA. Kirkpatrick Sale explores this thought in his analysis of the emerging political clout of what he calls "the southern rim."