Marlo, how would you suggest that consumers go about demanding flex-fuel vehicles? First, I bet you a bottle of non-fuel alcohol (single-malt whisky is my preference) that not one consumer in a thousand has yet heard of flex-fuel vehicles.

Second, even after they became aware, and even after their cards and letters to GM and Toyota somehow persuaded auto executives to produce more flex-fuel vehicles more quickly, they’d have to convince their local service stations to install alcohol fuel pumps. How exactly would that work — until and unless there is a critical mass of flex-fuel vehicles on the road?

As I tried to say in my column, there is a chicken-and-the-egg dilemma to overcome. There’s no market for flex-fuel vehicles because alternative fuels are not readily available. And alternative fuels are not readily available because there are not enough flex-fuel vehicles that can burn them.

Actually, I do think – in the long run – the market will solve this problem. But as Keynes observed, in the long run we’ll all be dead — and the long run may be a lot shorter if we keep sending trillions of dollars to our enemies in the global war now being waged against us. In World War II we took pains to cut off oil supplies to both Germany and Japan — and that had a huge impact. And if oil had been $100 a barrel 20 years ago, the Soviet Union would not have collapsed and the Cold War would not have been won during Reagan’s tenure.

I’m with you generally about not encouraging the government to interfere in the economy. But because there is a national security imperative involved here, it makes sense to make an exception — to move more quickly to inject renewed competition into the transportation fuel market.

As it happens, this will also have economic and other benefits. For once, we have a problem government can solve.

In other words, don’t let your dogma run over America’s flex-fuel karma!