BOB SCHIEFFER: Bill Daley, the White House chief of staff, said on Meet the Press this morning that one of the options now is to consider using oil from the Strategic Oil Reserve in order to bring down the price of gasoline in this country. Does that make sense to you?
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: That would rank in my top five worst ideas of 2011 so far. I think that there's one thing we should finally be doing is using this opportunity to have a credible energy policy that begins to reduce our addiction to oil.
Gasoline is almost $4 a gallon. We know that's a red line where people really start to change their behavior. At a minimum, I'd be talking about a tax that basically says we're going to keep it at $4. If it goes below we'll true it up, if it goes above that we're not going to touch it. Maybe say we're not going to implement it until 2012. So you signal people it's going to be coming, you don't change the – you don't harm the economy today but you get people to change their behavior.
Bob, if we don't to that, going forward the difference between a good day and a bad day for America is how the 86-year-old king of Saudi Arabia basically manages this reform process. That's where we're putting ourselves. We're putting ourselves in the hands of probably the most frail, antiquated regime in the Middle East. They will be setting your gas price.
I realize this still doesn't convince my "pragmatic" friends who really believe the earth needs to be saved. But as even Green Peace leaders have admitted, this is not about saving the earth. It is about destroying Capitalism. This is about controlling your behavior to the way they want you to live. If it were really about oil shortages, then why not drill? Oh wait! That solution leads to freedom, and we can't have that!
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