Lifting Fed’s Oil Export Ban ‘Would Add 630,000 New Jobs’ and Lower Prices More (Ted Cruz)

I’ve been lied to too many times by the CofC, “captains of Industry” and Uncle Sam. I am cynical so excuse me if I call BS.

The natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough. The wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing. - Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments
So you have Adam Smith on your side, if not for cynicism then at least for skepticism. I put it to you that the cardinal virtue of FR is that it enables us to pool our “incredulity,” which is a scarce good.
But to go over into cynicism is, imho, unwise. In fact, I’ve proved to my own satisfaction that cynicism is what makes a “liberal” a “liberal.”

I, Pencil
My Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Read
I am a lead pencil—the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all boys and girls and adults who can read and write.*
Writing is both my vocation and my avocation; that's all I do.
You may wonder why I should write a genealogy. Well, to begin with, my story is interesting. And, next, I am a mystery—more so than a tree or a sunset or even a flash of lightning. But, sadly, I am taken for granted by those who use me, as if I were a mere incident and without background. This supercilious attitude relegates me to the level of the commonplace. This is a species of the grievous error in which mankind cannot too long persist without peril. For, the wise G. K. Chesterton observed, "We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.”
I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe, a claim I shall attempt to prove. In fact, if you can understand me—no, that's too much to ask of anyone—if you can become aware of the miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing. I have a profound lesson to teach. And I can teach this lesson better than can an automobile or an airplane or a mechanical dishwasher because—well, because I am seemingly so simple . . .

http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html
. . . The lesson I have to teach is this: Leave all creative energies uninhibited. Merely organize society to act in harmony with this lesson. Let society's legal apparatus remove all obstacles the best it can. Permit these creative know-hows freely to flow. Have faith that free men and women will respond to the Invisible Hand. This faith will be confirmed. I, Pencil, seemingly simple though I am, offer the miracle of my creation as testimony that this is a practical faith, as practical as the sun, the rain, a cedar tree, the good earth.

Leonard E. Read (1898-1983) founded FEE in 1946 and served as its president until his death.

"I, Pencil," his most famous essay, was first published in the December 1958 issue of The Freeman. Although a few of the manufacturing details and place names have changed over the past forty years, the principles are unchanged.
Skepticism is prudent, cynicism - superficial negativity - is a selfish rejection of the faith that sustains freedom. We have to trust the invisible hand. I make an exception in the case of oil imports, in the sense that I think that a $5 tariff on OPEC oil would stabilize our industry and prevent mischief which would be even more expensive - and in more than treasure - than the distortions it would introduce in our economy.

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