Priorities not being addressed

Victor Davis Hanson:

...the United States keeps borrowing to meet its enormous consumer and oil appetites. The Japanese and Chinese have, combined, stockpiled over a trillion dollars from indebted Americans. One or both nations will inevitably adopt an assertive foreign policy to reflect their financial leverage over the U.S.

Despite politicians' rhetoric about energy independence, Americans have made no progress in curbing our enormous oil appetite, which accounts for 25 percent of the world's daily consumption.

We incur debt to pay for imported petroleum, while ensuring astronomical world oil prices. That hurts poor nations and translates into billions of dollars pouring into the most unstable and hostile governments of the Middle East - and eventually to terrorists themselves.

There are more than 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States. Thousands took to the streets on May Day to demand new rights. While we squabble over border defense, increased security, guest workers, verifiable IDs, amnesty and earned citizenship, hundreds of thousands more aliens come illegally into the United States every year.

The public and its leaders know these problems cannot continue unaddressed - and yet we fear the bitter medicine to come far more than suffering with the present chronic illness.