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We need to ban the importation of oil.

I completely agree. Such a move would shoot retail prices into the stratosphere, kicking off a monstrous inflation in the U.S. -- but it would also go a long way toward finally killing the oil-based, road-centered culture in this country.

With gasoline and oil rationed for military and emergency use only, everything deilvered or produced using cheap imported oil would suddenly become horribly expensive -- and Americans would finally feel the sting of war. We would at last be forced to sacrifice for victory. The end of the cheap-gas illusion would require us to switch from chemically-fertilized, agribusiness-produced, truck-shipped cheap food to the pricier fare from our local farms and dairies for our daily bread. The result: better-tasting, healthier food, produced by familiy farmers instead of godless industrial conglomerates. (Victory gardens would also make a big comeback.) Commuting by car would cease, forcing Americans to travel by bus, train, and bicycle, improving the health, nerves, and breathing of urban Americans. Instead of wasting time downloading porn and smoking pot, neighbors would find themselves obliged to band together to share food and clothes, hoe each other's vegetable patches, fix the local doctor's bicycle, swap chores, and generally help each other out. Best of all, America could finally begin building a new generation of safe nuclear power plants on a 24/7 basis, allowing us to finally gain energy independence and tell the rest of the world to kiss our red-white-and-blue striped asses.

But we won't do any of that. Americans go nuts if gas goes up a quarter a gallon; if it went up to ten dollars a gallon -- or became unavailable a any price to those without a Federal Emergency Petroleum Authority "T" Sticker -- there will be riots in the streets demanding cheap gas. We prefer the illusory "freedom" of personal automobile transport to the real fredom that comes from living in a self-sufficient nation.

Pathetic.

"Commuting by car would cease, forcing Americans to travel by bus, train, and bicycle, improving the health, nerves, and breathing of urban Americans. Instead of wasting time downloading porn and smoking pot, neighbors would find themselves obliged to band together to share food and clothes, hoe each other's vegetable patches, fix the local doctor's bicycle, swap chores, and generally help each other out. Best of all, America could finally begin building a new generation of safe nuclear power plants on a 24/7 basis, allowing us to finally gain energy independence and tell the rest of the world to kiss our red-white-and-blue striped asses."

To you this is an ideal vision, not unlike that of the commissars of the supreme soviet. It did not work then and will not work now.
Why stop there? Wouldn't the effort and resources used to make wheel chairs be better spend on victory gardens or finding and gathering wood to keep warm on freezing nights?
Yes we can all raise some cotton or kill some deer to make clothes but we don't have to. Man, as he was directed, has been given the earth to make more for himself. We have gone beyond.
Yes I can pull a sore tooth and take a few days off to convalesce or I can get a dentist to do it relatively painlessly and be back at work the next day. Your statements speak of a nearly Thoreau type idealism that did not work even for those days, and will not work now. Do you really believe that an elite would not still enjoy cars and central heat? We already won the cold war against an adversary whose founders spoke of the same ideas you now espouse.
All that did was set their country back 25 years and cost about 50 million people their lives. However a couple of things you mention would work and are needed. We need nuke power ASAP. That alone would set us free and make our economy prosper. Cheap power, cleaner environment right off the bat. We have the technology, we should do that.
Next, reduce imports from the muslim nations by drilling for our own on our soil. Help the Canadians develop their oil sands. Import ONLY from those who follow our idea of life, democracy, and the market.
This would take a while but would eventually dry up the $$$ that terrorists states and sympathizers have to spend in the free markets. No money and they are powerless. Who cares if they kill themselves if they are not contributers to the worlds betterment.

Yes things are going to be tough for a while but we can handle it if we put our minds to it. That has always been the American, and modern way. No need to demand a return to walden pond to overcome problems we should be beyond.

I have faith in our ingenuity and our can do spirit. We have ALWAYS overcome our impediments and gotten better. We will again.

Sir I feel sorry for you that the soviet union is dead. You do however still have a wealth of reading material on the web in in libraries from Lenin, Marx, Mao, Chomsky, et al. Don't worry, there will not be a bunch of competition to view those proven works of failure.

We are beyond where you want to take us and that is good. People live longer lives, have PLENTY to eat, and can spend time learning and living rather than just surviving. I for one am glad

Commuting by car would cease, forcing Americans to travel by bus, train, and bicycle...

I don't think you would have to go this far. I say ban vehicles that get less than 20MPG on the highway and give tax incentives for any vehicle that gets more 30MPG. Exclude any heavy trucks and buses from this restriction, though. Give tax incentives for any vehicle that is a hybrid or runs on alternative fuels. Drill ANWR and off the coasts and we will reduce our oil dependency by 75%. This by itself would alleviate the need to obtain oil from hostile sources. Build 50 to 100 Nuclear plants and we will have eliminated our oil dependence altogether.