Stop Fighting Over The Tiny Pie

After watching the debate tonight I decided to start this blog. We can, and will talk about many things on this blog, but one thing I am all done with is playing within this system, both politically, religiously, and probably on other issues. The debate went about as I expected, essentially two candidates arguing over how to slice up an ever diminishing pie. We can get bogged down into the details of this or that tax program, this or that entitlement, endlessly boring details about health care, education programs, the financial meltdown, and how the same people that caused this meltdown are going to fix this problem. This is like asking the executives at the post office to initiate programs in employer-employee relationships. America and its people are being sold short by such a limited vision offered by both parties.

I will use scripture quite a bit on this blog as I am a believer but I am NOT religious, so I promise no self-righteous quotations of scripture. Scripture to me reads like mathematical formulas:
Blessed are the poor in spirit = for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are the peacemakers = for they shall be called sons of God.
Blessed are the pure in heart = for they shall see God.

Now that is just three of the Beatitudes and all eight read like equations. This action will produce such and such a result. What is lacking, and has been lacking for a long time in America; there is no vision other than we are "consumers." We cannot just exists as consumers, it is meaningless and eventually such a lifestyle produces the financial error that will take several years for this country to overcome, that is if the same government officials and financial "masters of the universe" that created this crisis don't plunge us deeper into the abyss.

I remember how secular humanist voices decried the days of America’s Manifest Destiny, how we displaced the Indians and all the resulting cruelties. How Secretary Seward was mocked for purchasing Alaska for $7,200,000. Yet what would the world be like if Americans did not have vision in our first century? Buying the Louisiana territory from France for 3 cents an acre; to fight a corrupt Mexico for the southwest, and take California from the elitist dons who each owned hundreds of thousands of acres and perpetuated the medieval Lord and serf system. We had to fight wars that are in some way a vision imposed upon us, sometimes for survival itself, such as WWII, and the following cold war.

I remember those days, Russia was a real threat, and those without vision or courage said such things as “better red than dead.” There are some things worse than death and not fighting for anything may be one of those things. Here is my idea of what should have happened at the debate. I will select the John McCain side as I think he is the lesser of two absolutely no vision evils. If I were John McCain I would have had consultations with some of our leading scientists and engineers on how we not only get off foreign (read Islamic) oil, but how can America with all it innovation and great thinkers become the major energy exporting nation in the earth. Pipe dream you say? But there are reputable scientists that say we can do these things…now, with current technology:

The potential for power from space has been recognized for over thirty years (1). Studies in the late 1970's by NASA and the Department of Energy produced a reference design for solar power satellites using then-current technology that showed technical feasibility, but also high cost. NASA returned to the subject with an exploratory study from 1999 to 2001. A review by the National Research Council (2) found the program to have a credible plan which required significant funding increases. Rather than strengthening the program, however, all funding for the space solar power group ceased after September 2001, and essentially no R&D work on power from space is now being done in the US. Worldwide over a trillion dollars a year goes to the energy industry, and utilities routinely construct multi-billion-dollar power plants. The energy industry has a bigger wallet than the entire US federal discretionary budget.

Just Google on Solar Power from the Moon and see how many universities and scientists have proposed these programs. There is nuclear that could be brought on line quickly if we can get the lawyers and ultra-environmentalists to stop the national suicide. The liberals argue we cannot drill our way out of this crisis, however this is sophistry. Nobody is saying we are going to answer all the energy problems by pumping more oil, the liberals then add to the sophistry by insisting even if you drill for oil you cannot get it online for 8 or 9 years. This is an outright lie.

Oil close to shore, (where most offshore oil is found) can be brought online in as little as 18 months, that is if you send the lawyers and environmentalists to China for a couple of years to harass their economy and allow America to grow again, as something more than consumers or endless lines of young people seeking to be on reality shows for a living.

There is tidal, geothermal, earth-based solar. Why is there no partnership between city governments, or state governments and industry to install solar cells on the roofs of buildings and houses in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and other sun cities in the West? What a woeful lack of vision among our government officials both nationally, state and city. Most are involved in the stupid "pie is only so big" argument. Germany does this with great success and that is a country with far less sunshine than our southwest.

One estimate by the physics department of the University of Houston says we could establish bases on the moon and with robot factories that would build solar collecting stations, then tight-beam microwave broadcast power to stationary satellites and then down to receiving stations on earth; clean renewable non-polluting power, and at one fifth the cost of current energy. This energy could be sold to other nations and bring money into the American treasury and American industry. The head of this department testified before congress a few years ago. Any interest, did you hear about it? Of course not, our congress critters went back to their pie fight.

It is time for conservatives to pre-empt American socialists and propose effective government-industry partnerships. I think we have to face it; America will never return to a small government model. If that observation is true, then we need to advocate to design a government that works for us, instead of a government that is used by narrow-minded, and if I may say so, mean-spirited and arrogant socialists to engineer utopias that never work, but at least they are in charge. (The whole point for socialists in my opinion, no matter how many children and poor folks they use as a club to beat us into accepting their spirit killing utopias).

I think humanity evolves (not in the Darwinian sense) but spiritually. In other words we have gone from the pure physical age, then to the Church age (the soul of man explored) and now I think, many of us are sensing something great is happening. Depending on your perspective it can be a fearful time. But I believe as part of the maturing of humanity as a whole we are being challenged as in no other time in human history, and that is to become beings that are more spiritual than soulish, more spiritual than physical, and yet we still remain triune beings. And the essence of becoming spiritual beings is that we must be in the image of God, and that means we also become creators.

In a sense we have been something like parasites on the earth. Using up energy that was stored over the eons as fossil fuel, and the earth is feeling the impact of our immaturity. But it is time to grow up and be what we were created to be and that is to create, to look for answers and science and technologies that do not exist now, but to bring forth the things we can certainly imagine. It is easy to just exist, to just “consume,” but it takes effort to create, it takes focus, it takes breaking out of the status quo, to stop fighting over a pie that never grows. We need to build some pie factories, to think bigger to get out of this left-right dynamic, to rise above that dynamic and become spiritual beings and function as creators.