You could be right and I might have translated wrongly from Spanish the word “ilusión” and which there, also, signifies something like a “hope of something good happening” somewhere along the lines of what a “I have a dream” could signify. In which case the phase should read

"The hopeful dreams of its young people are the best expressions of a country’s true wealth”

How about confidence in the rightness of liberty?

That way we can contain cynicism where appropriate and hope where appropriate.

Anybody who doesn't possess a at least a modicum of cynicism in regard to politics is
a as much a fool as anyone who is cynical about everything.

What you just posted was good, but I have to ask. Are you sure you want to use the word illusions in this:

"The beliefs and the illusions of its young people are the best expressions of a country’s true wealth.
Posted by: Per Kurowski | Jun 11, 2008 9:48:58 AM"

An illusion is basically a decption, and I can't see how you can rationally explain how the self deception of youth is a valuable asset (true wealth). I am certainly willing to read and learn, if you can do so.

The role of a professor is not to kill illusions but to help create those good illusions that drive a society forward. The role of a professor is most definitively not to contaminate his students with his own disillusions.

Posted by: Per Kurowski | Jun 11, 2008 9:48:58 AM

Sorry but not these public-school indoctrinated young people. They are not our true wealth anymore.

ABOUT: Mc.Cain And Milli Vanilli
America is a country where they have freedom of speech but everyone says the same thing.

About: Milli Vanilli Bubbles
I am far from denying that newspapers in democratic countries lead citizens to do very ill-considered things in common; but without newspapers there would be hardly any common action at all. So they mend many more ills than they cause.

ABOUT: Hollywoods Media
In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them.

ABOUT: Speech Without Substance (Liberal but no concept and consistency in believes)
The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express.

About: Changes We Cannot Beleives It
- The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.
- It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.

ABOUT: Hillary Vs. Milli Vanilli
I have no hesitation in saying that although the American woman never leaves her domestic sphere and is in some respects very dependent within it, nowhere does she enjoy a higher station. And if anyone asks me what I think the chief cause of the extraordinary prosperity and growing power of this nation, I should answer that it is due to the superiority of their women.

Your's
Alexis de Tocqueville
(http://www.c-span.org/classroom/tocqueville)

The purpose of evoking fear, the starting point for many political causes, is to keep humans in animal/reactive mode. This makes them receptive to faith in hierarchical leadership.

I am sorry, but some of those who write here give an impression of just being some Hitler- Jugend´s fighting communism.

Obama's "change" platform is but a mutation of the revolutionary thinking (anathema to the classical liberal) that has wooed the masses throughout the ages and paved the way for monsters like Stalin and Mao and Hitler. This mentality is cunningly manipulated by the Chávez and the Obamas of the world to sway public opinion in their favor and to convince the people that they themselves are the "saviors of the fatherland". But where does this mentality come from? Here is an interesting quote from Norman Cohn, "The Pursuit of the Millenium", that strives to answer that question:

"For amongst the surplus population living on the margin of society there was always a strong tendency to take as leader a layman, or maybe an apostate friar or monk, who imposed himself not simply as a holy man but as a prophet and savior or even as a living god. On the strength of inspirations or revelations for which he claimed divine origin this leader would decree for his followers a communal mission of vast dimensions and world-shaking importance. The conviction of having such a mission, of being divinely appointed to carry out a prodigious task, provided the disoriented and the frustrated with new bearings and new hope. It gave them not simply a place in the world but a unique and resplendent place. A fraternity of this kind felt itself an elite, set infinitely apart from and above ordinary mortals, sharing in the extraordinary merits of its leader, sharing also in his miraculous powers. Moreover the mission which most attracted these masses from the neediest strata of the population was—naturally enough—a mission which was intended to culminate in a total transformation of society. In the eschatological phantasies which they had inherited from the distant past, the forgotten world of early christianity, these people found a social myth most perfectly adapted to their needs."

http://thepeoplescube.com/red/viewtopic.php?t=2033

Remember we must recognize that our faith says that the public school system in the USA really is as bad as we believe it to be.

I speak of the school system that has for decades been pumping out a majority that really are as fundamentally ignorant as we believe them to be.

I could elaborate on the above statement for days but it isn't necessary to go beyond it when addressing a group of intelligent people who are capable of extrapolation of a core idea.

This tenured professor should do well remembering that if those “Millions of Americans who famously believe that a President can fundamentally ‘change’ America” did not believe so, for a starter he would not have a University to be tenured at, and he would most probably be hiding from the anarchy that would be rampant on the streets.

The beliefs and the illusions of its young people are the best expressions of a country’s true wealth.