[dmm]

dumbluck:
First of all, thanks for your comments.
Re energy policy:
I agree with you about average fuel economy laws. What a crock! But that isn't at all what I would do. I would simply put a big penalty tax on gas guzzling vehicles. If the consumer wants to pay that, so be it. Probably I would also grant rebates to businesses that legitimately need things like pickups, and maybe also to large families. (But maybe not; maybe that should just be the cost of doing business or having a large family.)
Or maybe I would just have a huge fuel tax. This would encourage conservation in all forms, such as living in smaller houses, keeping your house energy-efficient, buying fuel-efficient vehicles, living close to work, carpooling, etc. Refusing to build new roads is for the same reason -- to make it inconvenient and expensive for people to waste energy and pollute the environment by living far from work and taking unnecessary trips.

This is not a matter of personal preference, like I hate rich suburbanites or something. It is a matter of making people pay the true cost of the lifestyle they are choosing. The true cost includes pollution, increased infrastructure, ecosystem destruction, wars over resources, etc. It simply is unfair to force urbanites to pay equally for such things.

Re foreign policy:
It seems to me that some countries already fall into the Category of "fool me twice, shame on you." The only remaining questions are "how much would it cost us to punish them for what they've done" and "are we willing to pay that price." (Totally irrelevant aside: how does one properly punctuate a sentence like that???)

As far as allowing people to choose their own government, I agree with you. I don't care if the Swedes want to be socialist; that's their business. But I disagree that the Chinese people are free to choose. They are living in continual fear. People routinely are sent away to slave camps without even a show trial for "crimes against the people" like worshiping God, earning too much profit, accessing the net without permission, or suggesting that the official way of doing things might not be the best way. I thought we learned during the civil rights struggles that "everyone is free, or no one is free." How can the world be free when 1/3 of its people are in bondage to the handful of people running the Chinese Communist Party? But even so, perhaps you would be right, that we should keep our noses out of it, if it were not for this other troubling fact: the govt of China is expansionist. Not content with despotically ruling their own people, they are intent on asserting their "rights" as the "natural and historical leader and protector" of all Asians. Lastly, they are bigots. They cause their people to be indoctrinated with the idea that Orientals are the superior race. Since the Chinese are mostly cut off from the rest of the world and have never met other races, and human nature being what it is, this idea has rooted itself pretty firmly in their national psyche. Can anyone say "Nazi Germany" or "Imperial Japan?" Except that China has manpower and resources far beyond those tyrant regimes. It lacks only widespread industrialization and modernization.

People talk of "engaging" China and of making them part of the world economy. They said the same things about the fascists prior to WWII. I am amazed that the Last decade has given such ample proof of the success of a cold war strategy, yet now people say it won't work with China.