Reminds Me of January 1981

On October 6, 1973 Egypt and Syria launched their armies into Israel in a surprise attack. It was Yom Kippur, the Jewish high holy day, and the attacks were successful with the two armies pushing into Israeli-held areas. It was the fourth time Israel’s Arab neighbors had attacked. Alarm spread that Israel might not be able to overcome a combined attack. The US rushed munitions to Israel and the world held its breath.

Arab world was outraged that the Israelis had escaped annihilation yet again

Reliable news was hard to come by, but it soon became apparent that the Israeli army had chosen to confront and defeat the Syrians in the north first and had then turned its full attention to the Egyptians that had crossed the Suez canal and flooded into the Israeli-held Sinai peninsula. News became sketchy again, then word began to seep out that the main Egyptian force was being encircled in the Sinai desert. When that effort succeeded and the Egyptians had been cut off and neutralized, there appeared in the Indianapolis Star one of my all time favorite headlines: ISRAELI TANKS RACE FOR CAIRO.

Finally the Middle East conflict could be settled once and for all, I hoped, but it was not to be. President Nixon made some calls and the Israelis stopped short of Cairo and went back to the old lines. They disarmed the Egyptians and let them go back home. Peace of a sort returned to the Middle East. The loss made the Egyptians much more agreeable and in time there was a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.

But the Arab world was outraged that the Israelis had escaped annihilation yet again. Because oil production in much of the world was in Arab hands, the oil producing countries through their organization OPEC decided they would stop the flow of oil to America and her allies in order to punish them for the Israeli victory. An oil embargo against any country that had supported Israel in the recent war began soon after the end of the Yom Kippur War. Within just a few months, the price of oil more than quadrupled and supplies were cut off to the United States and other countries.

Gasoline shortages began in the US that fall, and the price of heating oil for homes skyrocketed, too. The embargo was lifted in March of 1974, but oil prices stayed at record highs and there were periodic restrictions in production so that oil and oil product shortages became common in the following years.

News was hard to come by then because the major networks and a few newspapers and news magazines controlled access to the major stories. Then as now these news organizations tilted to the left and slanted news stories as they wished. President Nixon had extracted the US from Vietnam with a peace agreement in January, 1973, but the press did not like him. Questions about the break-in at the Watergate Hotel in June of 1972 filled the press during all of 1973 and 1974 until Nixon’s resignation in August. In April 1975 South Vietnam fell to the communists. It was a tumultuous and terrible time.

The public’s attention had been distracted by Vietnam and Watergate and the Ford presidency so completely that there was little left to give to understanding the oil crisis. I followed the news carefully then, but had no explanation for why we would be short of gasoline and heating oil when we had all that oil in Texas and Oklahoma and Louisiana. It didn’t make sense. When the oil embargo hit, our domestic oil production didn’t go up. What was going on?

When Jimmy Carter was elected president in 1976 there was little hope of sorting our economic problems and ending the oil shortages. He said we were just in a malaise and that cold homes and declining fortunes were going to have to be part of our future. It couldn’t be helped.

For the four years of the Carter presidency things got worse with no sign of improvement ahead. Oil shortages and gas lines became normal in America with higher and higher prices. There were price controls put on gasoline, but it did no good to decree a low maximum price for gas when there wasn’t any to be had. OPEC countries laughed at us and ran prices higher. In 1979 the new Iranian revolutionary government cheered when our embassy personnel were taken hostage and held prisoner. It was a diplomatic outrage, but there was nothing to be done about it. Our nation and the entire West despaired.

Sometimes there were seeming miracles. In 1978, a Polish cardinal became the new Pope John Paul II. In 1979, Margaret Thatcher became the new prime minister in Britain. Much of the world remained gloomy, but here were two new inspiring figures on the world stage. Then in 1980, Ronald Reagan won the presidency against the hapless Carter. If we could survive until inauguration day, there might be a bright dawn ahead. It seemed a long time, but January 20, 1981 finally arrived. I watched him take the oath at the Capitol with soaring spirits and a determination to hang on until he could right the ship of state.

Because our news sources were limited in those days, I didn’t figure out the significance of a stop Reagan made inside the Capitol right after he gave his first inaugural address. He sat down at a small table and signed an executive order lifting all price and production controls on oil and natural gas in the US. I didn’t even know we had price and production controls on oil. It turns out we had been limiting exploration and drilling and controlling domestic oil prices since the 1950s. Using powers granted to FDR during World War II, Reagan ended the Arab oil embargo’s stranglehold on oil prices. World oil prices immediately soared.

So the past two weeks have reminded me very much of the first days of the Reagan administration in January, 1981

I borrowed a car and made a trip to Iowa just at that time and was astonished to see gasoline prices as high as $1.30 per gallon! Oil producers in this country opened up old wells and drilled new ones. OPEC went nuts and made threats, but it was no use. Oil prices went way up and this time it brought more production because producing new oil was no longer against the law. Then prices came way back down and settled into what had by then become a comfortable price range. OPEC’s power was broken because we freed domestic production from the tyranny of political regulations and rules. We must tell and retell this story so that every new generation understands what happened on that day. The history textbooks are already lying about it and omitting it.

So the past two weeks have reminded me very much of the first days of the Reagan administration in January, 1981. But there’s a difference. The economic ruin and malaise of the Carter years seemed very mysterious to me at the time. The economic ruin and malaise of the Biden years, which began in the Obama years, isn’t mysterious at all. We could see what they were doing and we could see that it was deliberate, intended to make the US into a socialist mess with elite progressive rulers like Obama, Harris, and the rest. They wanted the country flooded with people dependent on government, and for four long years they did the flooding and dared anyone to stop them while they reviled and attacked us for opposing it.

On January 20, 2025, Donald Trump went to work immediately

On January 20, 2025, Donald Trump went to work immediately. Off and on during that day and on many days after he signed executive order after executive order freeing the country, its economy, and its people from the onerous restrictions and wrongheaded policies that had plagued it for so long. Among the first things to be jettisoned were the price and production controls that had shackled and shuttered energy production for four dark years. Exports of oil and LPG were authorized again and oil companies were urged to Drill, Baby, Drill. It’s a brighter future we can see already.

So this year’s inaugural reminded me of the one in 1981, but it’s far better this time because those who sought to bring our country down have been found out and exposed for what they are. We hoped for these days and worked and voted and prayed, and here it is. It’s the second Trump term, at last. Now we have better sources of information and news so that we can revel in events as they happen. What a time to be seeing history unfold before us in this glorious way. Thank God for our many blessings and our brighter future.

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