Are We Moral Yet?

During the debate over health care 'reform' supporters would trot out the talking point that America is the only advanced country that doesn't provide national health care for all citizens.

Obama raised the point again in a 17-minute response to a Carolina woman who asked him why, in these economically stressful times, Washington is raising taxes in HR 3590. He responded, along with other gems, "There is a moral imperative that is important."

Fine. Let's take the nationalist point of view for a moment and examine a few other facts about this — at least until March 21, 2010 — most immoral of advanced countries called America.

• America is the only advanced country that has failed to make wide use of nuclear power for electricity generation. France: 76%, Japan: 25%, South Korea: 35%, Switzerland: 39%. Even the social democrats' darlings, Sweden and Belgium, are at 42% and 54%, respectively. The U.S.? Less than 20%.
• More generally, when it comes to exploitation of natural resources — oil in particular, but the point applies to others — the U.S. is woefully laggard.
  
  Brazilians and Russians will suck oil from beneath the seas off the Florida coast before Americans will. The oil sands of Colorado and South Dakota are still off limits, and likely to remain so for some time to come. The next Ice Age will arrive before a tiny patch of mosquito-infested, Alaskan tundra is allowed to see a drill, if Obama has anything to say about it.
  
  
• In fact, in one area — hydroelectric dams — the trend is negative. One smarmy git was featured in a major commercial recently boasting about how he had successfully worked to eliminate a number of them over the past 20 years. That's an effort fully supported by environmentalist Progressives.

Somehow, I don't think Obama will be pushing very hard to overcome that gap in morality any time soon.