“Hope,” wrote Emily Dickinson, “is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul,” asking nothing in return for songs of comfort and support that are “sweetest in the gale.”

Despite its importance, however, hope is not the most important of human expressions; for hope alone opens neither the gates of Heaven nor doors on earth.

That truth explains why Alexander Pope, citing humanity’s “blindness to the future” and infinitesimal smallness in contrast to God, advised us to “Hope humbly.”

It also explains why the pragmatic Ben Franklin warned of the danger of depending only upon “the thing with feathers” in his aphorism, “He that lives upon hope will die fasting.”

But why these cautionary thoughts about hope today?

First — Because my guard is up on the subject, having been aroused by a messianic president-elect who is so audaciously enamored of hope that without a bit of shame, he speaks of leading his flock not simply to “perfect this nation” but to “change the world.”

Second — Because from Boston to Berkeley, there are far too many citizens who ought to experience a chill running up their spines in the face of cheap hope but instead exult in it — as an indescribable thrill runs not just up their legs but through their entire bodies.

(Those who doubt the consuming, all-encompassing nature of those thrills haven’t read the Media Research Center’s “Obamagasm Awards” for 2008.)

Finally — Because of the reality that hard times provide snake oil peddling politicians and their supporters the opportunity of their dreams for convincing a fearful citizenry to imitate Shakespeare’s Claudio in believing they “have no other medicine/But only hope.”

Are these fears about the dangerous hucksters of hope warranted?

To answer that question for yourself, simply read the New York Times, where you will find “wildly spend and madly tax” Paul Krugman trying to convince the “talk and hope are never cheap” Obama administration to spend a trillion “stimulus” dollars.

Then, worried that such an orgy of borrowing amid an ocean of other debt will motivate the public to eschew mere hope for some really serious thinking, Krugman advises Obama to supervise the spending of his “recovery” money New Deal style — i.e. with such meticulous care that not one dollar will be wasted or stolen, thereby denying political ammunition to the opposition.

Talk about spinning hope out of thin air! But what should we expect from a Nobel Prize winning economist who preaches the bible of thirties style “stimulus” even though the New Deal’s actual record is that the nation’s GDP didn’t return to 1929 levels until the winds of war helped push it there in 1940.

(No wonder Obama is cautioning that recovery “his way” will take an indeterminate number of years. But then, it is true that no welfare state was ever built overnight.)

As for Mr. Krugman’s hope that in today’s federal government, Congress and the executive can spend trillions without huge waste and fraud, someone needs to inform the eminent economist that it took $150 billion of payoff pork for the Democratic House and Senate to pass the $750 billion bailout bill.

That someone might also remind Krugman about the audaciously insulting pork with which Dems, led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, loaded the Iraq War funding bill of ’06 and the omnibus spending bill of ’07.

Trouble is, Someone would be wasting his or her time because liberals are salivating over the best chance they’ve had in forty years to put the U.S. on the path to becoming Sweden.

In fact, it is precisely the current wonderful opportunity to “perfect this nation” that explains the hope about avoiding waste and theft, about avoiding the ravages of inflation, about avoiding the realities connected with an eventual return to “fiscal responsibility” (a euphemism that really means tax increases as shockingly enormous as the spending now being proposed).

Yes, foolish hope is all the rage these days.

Even the usually sensible Tom Friedman got caught up in it when he used his perch at the NY Times to warble this warning: “But we must make certain that every bailout dollar, which we’re borrowing from our kids’ future, is spent wisely.”

Clearly, Tom temporarily left this universe for one in which politicians are decent, eminently principled beings and the citizens who get “bailout” or “recovery” money are perfectly moral, rational creatures who never in a trillion years would say, “What the hell; it’s only government money! They can always print more!”

Fortunately, Friedman quickly returned to the planet in the universe Ben Franklin called home:

“Generally, I’d like to see fewer government dollars shoveled out and more creative tax incentives to stimulate the private sector to catalyze new industries and new markets. If we allow this money to be spent on pork, it will be the end of us.”

“It will be the end of us.” Is Tom Friedman hoping for disaster for some crass political purpose?

Of course not. He’s simply employing reason and common sense of the kind embraced by the American majority, who are main street conservatives whether Republican, Democrat, or Independent — and who are regularly scorned, insulted, and stereotyped by big shot, “big idea” liberals and “conservatives” of politics and the media.

Yes, like ordinary-citizen conservatives across the nation, Friedman knows all about the problem with hope — though he expressed it more delicately than Ben did when he counseled, “He that lives upon hope will die fasting.”