Yet, basic truths such as this are becoming increasingly lost in our country and this is what should be driving our outrage. That we now live in a country where our private property is no longer safe and the very government that supposedly exists to protect it has become the thief we have to worry about.

President Obama went on Jay Leno's popular Tonight Show and talked about the current crisis. Listening to him, there seems little doubt that everything started on Wall Street. "The problem is ... people were able to take huge, excessive risks with other people's money."

But, Mr. President, half the mortgages in this country are owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- which were and are backed up with the money of us taxpayers. An easy flowing mortgage credit market built by politicians, by setting us taxpayers up to guarantee it all, which is what we wound up doing, is what started this whole thing.

The president and Leno bantered about electric cars and, talk about taking risks with other people's money, the president apparently sees no problem tapping into us taxpayers to finance research into these cars. "So, we're going to be investing billions of dollars in research and development around these technologies -- that's what's going to create the auto industry of the future," Obama said.

We've already used taxpayer funds to bail out auto companies. Now we're going to use them to take over their research and development functions.

Given what the International Property Rights Index shows, we might consider that because private property has become as insecure as it has in our country -- that we have really legalized theft -- that this might be what's at the root of our economic chaos.

So, we can have government-issue edicts on what executives are paid at companies that politicians bail out with taxpayer funds. Or maybe we should check if families whose mortgages we bail out are going on vacation or out to dinner.

Or we can re-direct our attention from symptoms to causes. We can recall that the founders of our country intended the role of government to protect our lives and property, not violate them. And that in times when we have respected that proper use of government, our country has prospered.