Life & Wisdom Quote by Frank Gaffney

Gaffney’s line is built to make energy policy feel like self-defense, not economics. By stacking “consuming oil” with “bent on our destruction,” he collapses a sprawling global supply chain into a moral melodrama: every fill-up becomes an involuntary donation to the enemy. The phrasing is intentionally breathless, almost accumulative, using repetition (“the more... the more...”) to mimic inevitability. You don’t just buy gas; you “enable” murder. That verb is the engine here: it shifts responsibility from distant regimes to ordinary citizens and policymakers, turning a market choice into a complicity claim.

The subtext is a familiar post-9/11 script of contamination and dependency. “Places” is vague on purpose, letting the listener plug in whichever adversary is politically useful at the moment - Middle Eastern states, Iran, Russia, any convenient villain - while “helping those who are” widens the net to include allies, trading partners, and anyone insufficiently aligned. The argument doesn’t need specificity; it needs a target-rich atmosphere.

Context matters: Gaffney, long associated with national security hawkishness and hardline Islam-focused framing, is speaking from a tradition that treats vulnerability as the central American sin. Energy independence becomes not just strategic but cleansing. The quote works because it weaponizes fear and guilt simultaneously, offering a simple story where complex tradeoffs are suspect and compromise looks like collaboration. It’s less a policy critique than a loyalty test: if you disagree, you’re not merely wrong - you’re assisting “those who are trying to kill us.”