Obsessing over 'security' or 'independence' of this or that commodity is the worst form of cargo cult Malthusianism. The key commodity that one needs to acquire all other commodities is wealth and the ability to create more. It is a strange, demented country indeed that will refuse to trade with others those things that it has for the money to get those things that it needs.
The United States specializes in the production of knowledge and entertainment intensive products and services that we sell to the rest of the world for dollars. To get those dollars the rest of the world needs to sell us something - that something are commodities, lower technology manufactured products and certain process services such as assembly, customer service and software maintenance and coding. We will produce a lot of oil via fracking, but even more importantly we will develop, prove and package fracking, horizontal drilling and advanced seismic analytic technologies and sell them to the world so that they can find more oil and sell it back to us.
Energy independence is a cretinous Nixonian/Malthusian heresy. The politicians and others who spout it beclown themselves. It would be just as useful to have underpant independence. Or for that matter skid mark independence. When will our political and pundit class grow up?
Not soon enough.
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