You walk outside onto your front porch, and cough almost immediately. There are no trees around you, and the air feels smoggy. Coughing again, you the run back inside because you can barely breath outside. You turn on the television to the news—the media reports the third natural disaster this month. First an earthquake in Los Angeles, second a tornado in Kansas, and now a hurricane has destroyed Miami—all in the month of August. You pour yourself a glass of water that has many harmful chemicals in it, but drink it anyways because that is all that is available unless you are very wealthy. If only you and the rest of the country had listened to the transcendentalist words of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau years, and did something to better your environment, you might live a better and healthier life. A similar scenario could happen fifty years from now, if the habits of Americans are not changed immediately. President-elect Barack Obama, congratulations on your win. The writings of Emerson and Thoreau can teach us many lessons about how to live our lives. I believe that these writing can also help you to run our country. One of Emerson’s famous essays is “Self Reliance.” In this essay, he talks about how every individual possesses a unique genius that can only be revealed when that individual has the courage to trust his or her own thoughts, attitudes, and inclinations against all public disapproval. Emerson states, There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. This quote talks about how the jealousy of others’ success only hinders the mind of humans. Man must accept who he is, and be the best he can be. He can only use the resources...