What is America? It is not the politicians. It is not the military. It is not the bureaucracy consisting of millions of people. America really is not even a place. America is an idea, that all people are born free, with certain unalienable rights. It is the idea that those rights were not given by any government and, thus, no government can legitimately take them away.

There are many obvious and significant differences between the conditions of people in developed countries and that of people from poverty stricken nations, which seem to be constantly stuck in reverse. The most outstanding and defining difference is the average level of wealth of the individuals.

“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” That familiar wisdom from the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible is familiar because it is so true. None of the political innovations which are plaguing modern society are innovations at all. They are retreads of old, worn out and failed philosophies of decades, centuries and millennia past.

“God grant that not only love of liberty but a thorough knowledge of the rights of man may pervade all the nations of the earth so that a philosopher may set foot anywhere on its surface and say, this is my country!” Benjamin Franklin was one of the great thinkers of his time and had a tremendous influence on the birth of America. His quote above entertained a vision that freedom could so take root in the world that anyone could go anywhere without feeling threatened or persecuted.

The Haitian people are suffering from the devastation of the recent earthquake. There was tremendous loss of life. For many of them, the grinding poverty that they had been living through before has only been intensified. Many more orphans roam the streets. It is a painful situation.

A Mandate from the People?

Scott Brown, the winner of the Massachusetts Senate seat of the late Teddy Kennedy, is one of a short but growing list of Republicans who weren’t supposed to win. It appears to some political fortune tellers that a backlash is growing to a hyperactive Democratic agenda of the prior year. Could it possibly be a “mandate from the people?”

Robert Shiller wrote a recent New York Times editorial, suggesting that the United States Government sell shares of the gross domestic product (GDP), similar to how corporations sell stocks. Mr. Shiller is obviously a very smart person. He is an economics professor at Yale University and authored various books on finance and the economy. He should know what he is talking about. So let’s look a little closer at his proposal.

A Penny saved is a penny earned. That is an old saying that we don’t hear much these days. The fact is that our grandmas knew what they were talking about. There is more power in that statement than even she could imagine. The underlying idea is that it takes effort or sacrifice of some sort to earn money. By saving that penny, we can have money in our pocket without having to work or expend any effort.

“Enthusiasm is like running in the dark. You might get there, but you might also get killed.” I don’t know the origin of that quote, but it seems to be appropriate for today’s politicians. To say that current economic events are challenging is a vast understatement. They are running around in the dark, trying this and that, hoping to find the magic pill to make everything better. What’s worse is that many people in this country are demanding that they run around in the dark, believing that they are superheroes with laser vision.

The phrase “First do no harm” is typically associated with the requirements of the Hippocratic Oath, the pledge by physicians to use their training for the good of the patient. It also can be stated as “the cure may be worse than the ill.” If you aren’t careful, good intentions may lead to bad results.