Dreaming Up A New And Better World

It’s not that I’m tired or bored or unhappy with the world we live in, it’s just that I’m aggravated because I think we could do so much better.

Every time I turn on the TV and hear about congress or the administration proposing some program that will cost us or our children money they can’t afford to spend, I start dreaming about living in a world that wouldn’t make all these mistakes and wouldn’t put our families and us at risk.

I have so many ideas to make things better that I think would cross party lines. Maybe you have ideas too that can help us create a better Country and world to live in.

To start with I would like to change election to both houses of Congress to run for only one year. If our elected representatives can’t do something in our best interests in a year than why should we trust them to ever get anything right? One year, they perform, or they’re out.

Both houses of congress must vote by a two thirds majority in favor of any bill including spending money or raising or lowering taxes or changing or creating any entitlement program before it can become law, and presidential vetoes in these cases are out.

If congress sits frozen and can’t enact any needed legislation like the budget, a twelve person citizens committee elected by Internet vote on five days notice to the public will have the people’s power to make the necessary decisions by fifty percent vote or by national Internet referendum if they can’t make up their minds.

On the international front:

No country in the world should be allowed to create a trade deficit. Either we trade even or else we stop trading when we reach an imbalance and learn to rely on our own resources both natural and man-made.

We will not purchase any goods made with child labor or products manufactured in foreign countries to obtain lower labor costs.

We will not go to war or fight on foreign soil for nation building purposes, or to bring our culture of democracy to anyone, but only to protect out national security interests in defense of our nation.

Let’s go viral with our new world. Let’s build a better place to live in for our families and for ourselves. Let’s try and preserve our democracy, our freedom, and the principles of our constitution that made this Country great.

Hi. I’m Arthur Levine, the author of the novel Johnny Oops. I’m sure a lot of you have even better ideas. Please add them to the comment section and we will use them as part of a revised article. Let’s go viral on http://johnnyoops.blogspot.com.

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Immigration -- Can We Use God’s Inspiration To Solve The Problem

Is our current policy providing a fertile hunting grounds for terrorists or is the spirit of “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” still alive and well in God’s country?


Talk about “huddled masses”, what do you call twelve million illegal immigrants? Is this what the poet Emma Lazarus had in mind when she used the term?

I have an idea, why don’t we just impose a huge illegal immigrant tax. We could probably eliminate our national debt in no time at all. The only problem with this self defeating strategy is that then no one would want to come to this country. Perhaps we should make it a both ways border tax. That way we could charge these illegal immigrants coming and going. There is nothing illegal about that is there?

We could also double the minimum wage, in which case the farmers might automate and eliminate the need for cheap labor. Our food prices would rise, inflation would set in, unemployment would grow, and our own citizens might become more willing to take low paying jobs again, thus eliminating the need for immigrants altogether except from a ‘do the right thing’ point of view. What about granting them all amnesty? Amnesty from what? I thought everyone has a right to pursue the American dream. So many choices, it is hard to know which to choose

Perhaps if we stopped offering illegal immigrants free health care and schooling for their children we could reduce the flow substantially, but I am afraid we might run the risk of growing our own illegal immigrant terrorists from this formerly hard working lot who would become upset at the lack of equal social services being supplied to them. Besides, we probably don’t have enough buses in this country to send twelve million people home and we surely can’t expect them to walk although that is how many of them got here. Do you think this whole problem is part of a French conspiracy? After all they sent us the Statue of Liberty on which Emma Lazarus’s poem is inscribed. I doubt it. It seems unlikely given that they have their own immigration problems.

What does the temporary or guest worker program proposed by the President and by some in congress really mean? Does it mean that illegal immigrants will have to work in this country until they are granted citizenship and then can stop working and go on welfare or refuse to take the low paying jobs that some corporations originally hired them for? What’s to stop these twelve million illegal immigrants from forming their own unified union and going on strike for higher wages and pension plans? Can illegal immigrants have 401K plans? Can they take tax deductions on their tax returns for foreign travel as a business expense? So many questions and no one seems to have all the answers. What would happen to our trade deficit if these people stopped buying American goods that are made in China? This thing has ramifications that none of us may have thought of. Is this what Emma Lazarus was alluding to when she said, “I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Are we the golden scapegoat for the world? Why not try to reverse the trend by helping Mexico employ their own citizens at a good living wage. We could even institute a buy Mexican policy. It might be cheaper than buying goods from China considering that we wouldn’t have to pay long distance freight charges.

What should we do to protect ourselves from foreign terrorists who might sneak across the border with all the peaceful and hard working immigrants? Perhaps we should install an honor system instead of a wall. We could ask all the illegal immigrants to report any terrorists crossing over with them – anonymously of course. Another approach that might work is to require all illegal immigrants to travel lightly. We should limit them to one small carry across the border type bag and allow nothing big enough to conceal a bomb. Probably something the size of a passport wallet would be safe.

Another approach would be to make Spanish our primary language instead of English. That way so many of us wouldn’t be able to understand our utility bills that we might have to migrate to England to find a commonly spoken language, then let’s see who revolts against whom. The only problem with this scenario is that the Muslim minority in England might object to being overrun by a new bunch of migrating American Christians. I almost forgot to mention the negative affect this transmigration might have on our national sovereignty, but then we are not talking about a flock of birds, are we? We are talking about a mass of humanity. When Emma Lazarus spoke of “the wretched refuse of your teaming shore”, do you think she had us, or the illegal immigrants in mind?

You might well ask where God comes into this whole mess. I believe it goes back to my belief that this is God’s homeland every bit as much as it is ours. I can almost see Him using the poet Emma Lazarus’s famous words, “send these the homeless, tempest-tost to me” as His own. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if God put those words in Emma Lazarus’s mind. Maybe we should find a way to honor the words of the poet and the thoughts of God at the same time. How about making all these illegal immigrants legitimate citizens of God’s world. They are anyway, aren’t they? There has got to be a better way to protect the rights of American citizens and at the same time give comfort to these struggling masses of immigrants. Can we look to God for the inspiration to find the answers?
***

Arthur Levine is the author of The Magic of Faith. Check out more of his writing at http://www.faith123.com

Does God Use Flash?

Please feel free to use this article as long as credit is given to the resource box.
(C) Copyright Arthur Levine, 2010
Words: 827
Keywords: God, Flash, Reality, Sun Bathing, Immigrants, Food, Smoking, Pills, Forefathers, Independence, I Pad


I’ve been wondering lately if God uses Flash to get our attention, or is he an I Pad kind of Almighty Being? Everything is moving so fast; it’s hard for me to tell. Sometimes what’s happening doesn’t seem real. I’m getting an other world feeling.

Maybe God finds all our attempts at technological invention funny. After all, He must have put all these ideas in our heads, or we would never have thought of them.

I hope this is not some form of game competing Deities are playing with our minds. There is only supposed to be one God no matter what His religion, right?

How do you know what is real and what is fiction these days? We are being told so many conflicting theories by the scientific community that it is hard to decide which ones are right and which ones are just figments of their imagination. I think the Media is at fault.

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting very tired of taking various foodstuffs off the food pyramid just when I was getting used to their taste because some genius has decided it causes cancer.

Someone has to make a decision about whether Sun bathing is going to give us much-needed vitamin D or give us skin cancer. I don’t want both for the price of one.

And before I pass away from a brain tumor, I would really like to know whether cell phones give you tumors or just a headache from talking or listening too much. I’m the kind of guy that talks too much because it is hard for me to hear on the darn things. Has your Grandmother told you that your fingers are going to fall off from too much texting yet? Wait until you get the bill.

Some people say that we can get very sick from the casing some of our pills come in and we should take our medicine orally in liquid form. I thought that was what I was doing until someone told me to stop drinking – it wasn’t good for my health.

Then there’s the whole smoking scenario. Being the stubborn self willed type of person that I am, I stopped smoking cold turkey with no patches or any type of crutch. Now I’ve blown up like a huge stuffed turkey myself, and if I don’t stop eating too much I’m going to need a real pair of crutches to get around. I bet I’m eating the wrong type of foods too. Probably going to kill myself from too much carbonated soda if the gas attacks or new government taxes don’t get me first.

When you stop and think about it, I believe that too much science and too much technology is probably the cause of a lot of our health problems. I bet we would all live longer if we walked more like our forefathers and only ate what we grew or hunted or fished for. Can’t fish anymore anyway because of the oil in the Gulf I guess.

That’s another thing, why are we so dependant on oil? Our forefathers didn’t need to fill their tanks with gas. They knew better. They didn’t even have tanks, but they did have taxes. That’s why we have America today. The British were slow to figure out we didn’t like to pay taxes. Somebody in our government better wise up. I can sense another Tea Party coming, and this one might be the big one we’ve all been waiting for.

Our forefathers didn’t have any immigration problems either. They were all immigrants, but then they came here on ships across the ocean, not by sneaking across the border, Sort of a process of natural selection I guess. If you could make it across the rough oceans on one of those leaky ships, immigration services weren’t about to send you back. My Grandmother came here on a tramp steamer lasting for fourteen days on bread and water. Someone stole all her belongings and provisions. She was thirteen at the time and lived in the US as a naturalized citizen until she passed at the age of 96. I’m really glad she made the trip.

What happened to our independence? It seems like it was gone in a Flash, or was that just a fleeting image I caught on my I Pad. One thing’s for sure, I need a new App. Something that will show me what to do, how to survive, something that will teach me right from wrong.

Oops, I forgot -- that’s God’s job.

What Is The New American Reality?

Reality show survivors eating mealy worms and bugs to win a competition, cartoon video game characters using guns and swords to kill each other, lonely people developing virtual friendships on the Internet, and politicians espousing their version of the truth: are these all new forms of reality that the American public has come to accept as fact today?

Whose reality is it anyway? Is it the reality of the producers of reality shows, the script writers of video games, the originators of Internet networking Web sites, or the talking points of government officials hoping to get elected, gone awry? Perhaps it is all of these things combined into what is presented as fact to the viewers and readers of these varied forms of modern day communications.

Modern day forms of communication such as radio, TV, magazines, newspapers, blogs, and video games serve as agents that afford us the opportunity to process information and interpret what is being said to us as we wish, coloring the so called facts as we desire, forming judgments as our minds eye dictates, and allowing politicians to convince us of the truth that they hold is self evident.

Deciding what is real and what is a public relations effort devoted to fostering ones program or position is not an easy task. The truth is it has never been easy to determine what reality is. Methods have always been available to distort the truth, prejudice our sensibilities and confuse our ability to reason. Modern forms of communication have only served to intensify the ability to distort the facts and speed up their delivery to the general public. The methods may have changed, but the ability to distort, alter, and shape the version of reality that we perceive to be the truth remain the same, and make it difficult to grasp what reality really is in America.

Americans today run the same risk of being misinformed, or just plain lied to that they were exposed to over two hundred years ago. Going back to the founding of our nation, people were being told things which were put in evidence as facts, and which have not stood the test of time. The real difference is that today, modern forms of communication have made it easier and quicker to disseminate misinformation, but have also provided the mechanism for uncovering distortions of fact on an almost instantaneous basis.

Bloggers on the Internet will pick up any misrepresentation of the facts immediately after they are presented, and then provide a correction based on what they believe to be true – their own version of reality. Cable TV news shows will via with each other to tell the American public whose version of reality is the correct one on a daily basis. Newspapers will endorse a particular party line depending on whether they hold a democratic or republican viewpoint. Magazines will use their political orientation to promote their own point of view. Competing video games will challenge each other over whose version of death and destruction is the right one to accomplish the complete virtual annihilation of an imagined enemy. Scientists will tell us what they believe reality is based on what they consider to be physical facts of the universe based on formulas, which themselves are based on theories not facts. Religious leaders will tell us what reality is based on their interpretation of what the bible says. But who amongst us can take as gospel which one of their varying interpretations is the only one that we should accept as real.

What is the average citizen to do? Who can you believe? Which version of the various realities one is offered a steady diet of is the truth? I think the real question should be is anyone really looking for reality anymore, or do we just want to hear and see what calms us down, makes us feel good, and assures us that we are doing the right thing.

Make no mistake about it; the new American reality is anything you want it to be. It can be a belief that we are spreading democracy by invading Iraq or Afghanistan. It can be justifying getting divorced rather than staying faithful to ones marriage vows when the going gets rough because of the catchall excuse of incompatibility. It can be an individual being absolutely convinced that only his or her path to God is the right one. It can be the concept that social equality is a form of liberalism, or that the whole concept is a misconception. It can be the ability to confuse want and desire with real need. It can be any and all of these things and much more. The new reality for Americans today is what you make of the information that is put before you. It is whatever you want to believe.

The new reality for Americans today is that as we develop and refine our ability to separate what we believe to be fiction from fact, as we refine our capacity to reason, we will have the opportunity to become more united as one nation, more dedicated to searching out the real truth, and more capable of creating a new reality that will be in our common interest. We can develop a belief system that will provide us with the strength to survive and prosper as one people with different versions of what reality really is, but with a shared vision of what we want our future to be. We can seize the opportunity to make the new American reality a force for good.

The new American reality can be a clarion call for a better future for ourselves, our children, and all the people of the world. It can be a manifestation of our innate desire to have peace. We may reach this new reality through different paths, and by reaching different conclusions about the facts as they are represented to us, but we can share a common goal of drawing a conclusion that will be in the best interests of all of us.

We may differ in our interpretation of the facts and what the new American reality really is, but we can all come together in a common desire to make our American dream come true. That’s what the new American reality should be about, turning dreams into a reality that will help each of us attain our goals in life, changing prejudices that have kept us from realizing our dreams, forming bonds that will protect us from the evils of terrorism, and sharing a common virtue instilled in us by our Creator.

Perhaps the most important part of the new American reality has been shaped in our minds by the natural disasters and acts of terrorism, which have befallen our people. We cannot change this part of the reality that we know to be true, but we can find a better way to deal with our problems in the future. If the new American reality is to be one of great promise, if it is to be within our grasp, we must find it in our hearts to accept that which we cannot change, and to change what inhibits us from achieving true greatness as a nation. We must exhibit the courage to believe that what we stand for as a people is real and has true merit.

We must find a better way to create a new American reality based on the common understanding that one person’s reality may not necessarily be the same as another’s. Sometimes we will have to compromise if we want to see our dreams of a new American reality take place. Sometimes we will have to take each other’s good intentions on faith.

The new American reality is within each and every one of us. It holds the potential for providing us with a new perspective that will allow everyone to participate in the great adventure that the new American reality is becoming. It gives us the opportunity to discover the last great frontier of a new world where reality is in the mind of the beholder. It gives each individual a chance to determine what his or her reality is. It gives you a choice of what you want to believe in.

You get to decide what’s real.

Who Am I – Who Are You?

Do you sometimes wonder if you are real, if the world we live in is real, or are we all part of some virtual reality game being master minded by some alien game master for his or her own purposes?

Do you get the nagging feeling that you’ve been here and done the same thing before?

Do people you just meet remind you of someone you remember or thought you knew?

Are you repeating the same mistakes, having the same emotions, worrying about the same old fears? Thinking the same old thoughts?

How do you know that you are real and not just some bit player in a universal game being controlled by a game master for his or her own entertainment.

Maybe the game master is what we think of as God. How do we know the truth? How can we be sure we are real?

Maybe we are all part of some giant quantum computer simulation. Are new age computer techniques ruling our lives?

Is everything we do preordained? Maybe our lives and our thoughts are being manipulated by a supreme being, but to what purpose?

Are we here merely for his entertainment or do we serve a higher purpose? Why bother with all this scurrying around: falling in and out of love, having children, having illicit affairs, having evil thoughts, trying to make a difference, trying to be successful, searching for recognition, craving acceptance, feeling pain, feeling joy.

If we’re not really here than how can we make a difference?

So many questions and what I really crave are answers, but how do I know that I really want the answers. Maybe the answers are to frightening for us to contemplate. Maybe we don’t want to know the truth.

And whose truth is it? Is its God’s truth? Am I real because I believe in Him?

I like to think I can make choices in my life. The choice I make is to believe in God and believe I’m real. It’s a matter of faith. It’s a matter of personal belief. It’s a matter of religious indoctrination. It’s a matter of spiritual conviction. It’s a matter of how I choose to live my life. It’s my reality.

What other choice do we really have?


Hi, this is Arthur Levine, the author of the novel Johnny Oops. To read more of Johnny’s views please access http://johnnyoops.blogspot.com

We Are Becoming A Nation Of Skinny Zombies

The government knows best. It is now telling us what to eat, when to work, how to get healthy, what drinks we can take to cure our thirst, how much we should weigh and on and on and on. New Czars, new committees, new councils, new regulations: the government is going to tell us how to live, what to do and when. We are becoming a nation of skinny Zombies walking through life at a shuffling pace as we leave it to the government to do the thinking for us.

Help!

No more junk food, no more addictive drugs, no more smoking, no more drinking: what is there left for us to do? Are they going to ration the number of children we have next so we can afford the social entitlements like government sponsored healthcare that we are being forced to accept against our will.

The government’s new motto is TAX, Tax, Tax, and Trust Us you don’t know how to manage your life, Big Brother knows best. Big Brother knows how to redistribute our wealth. What happens when they decide it’s your wealth that needs redistributing next?

HELP!

What happened to our rights? I think us citizens need an Amnesty type program like the illegal immigrants are going to be offered so that we may be allowed to think for ourselves once again.

Who legislated away our right to think and breath free? Whose greater good are we working for: the people that administer the government? I want out of this nightmare of legislative frenzy and administrative over think.

I want my vote and my opinion and yours to count again. Even the people that are fine with what the government is doing are going to wake up one day and wonder why their children don’t have any rights to their own destiny, and what happened to their freedom, but it may be to late.

HELP!

When are we going to come to our senses as a Nation and fight back at the ballot box? When are we going to decide to elect Congress men and women who represent us not a misguided political elite? When are we going to return to the principals our founding fathers inculcated in the constitution to protect our individual rights?

When are we going to come together as a free people and say No More? No more government control. No more government taking away our freedoms. No more government telling us what is best for us. No more having our wishes disregarded by our Congress and the Administration.

Enough is enough.

It is time to start Helping ourselves.