For nigh unto two decades Americans have been told that China, Russia, and other totalitarian nations traditionally hostile to freedom, closed to free markets, aggressive towards the West and the U.S., and murderous in their conduct towards their neighbors and own people, have mellowed.

"They've changed. They're embracing freedom," we're reminded by academics and news pundits over and over again.

So, after endless bailouts and the deliberate transfer of U.S. industry and technological know-how to those socialist countries, what are we getting in return?

"Venezuela will buy combat and training aircraft from China this week," Breitbart recently reported.

Chavez, “a staunch foe of the US government,” the report continues, “confirmed that while in Beijing he will arrange the construction of tanker vessels in Chinese shipyards, with the aim of installing a shipyard in Venezuela in the near future.”

If we think we’re hurting at the pump right now, “Caracas,” which “provides 500,000 barrels of oil per day to Beijing,” is about to ramp that up to “one million barrels a day by 2012.” Chavez’s petro-Marxist regime is also poised to benefit from the “construction of a refinery in China to process oil from Venezuela.”

Increasing our refining-capacity is something Americans have been led to believe we can do without, because, after all, as the junk science press incessantly reminds, with all the scientific backing of a fairy tale, our consumption of fuels is causing “global warming.”

So, while we base economic policies on environmental myths, our nations’ traditional enemies have used our trade deficits, generous economic concessions, and technology transfers to gear up for cornering the supply of easy oil across the globe.

And just to let us know that they still can’t be pushed around, Russia is now gearing up for military exercises near Venezuela.

The cost of empire-building, with the middle class footing the bill, just doesn't make the ROI worth it, does it?