The Golden Rule as most people know it - "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" - is backwards when applied to our country. This principle has been distorted by well-meaning people who believe it is their sacred duty to impose their good intentions on everyone around them. These folks believe their way of living, their values, their lifestyle, is the "right" way to live, thus they are obligated to impose what they want for their own life onto the lives of everyone else. Simply put, they believe what is good for them must be good for all. 

On the contrary, the spirit of Americanism is one of protecting a person's right to live freely as they see fit, so long as you are not hurting someone else's rights. So, in America, the true Golden Rule is to act in ways that do not interfere with the lives and interests of other citizens in ways that you would not want them to interfere in your life.  

Consider the old adage: 

    Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish, and you feed him 
    for a lifetime.

This parable preaches that the best way to care for others is to help them to help themselves. This great moral and ethical lesson serves as a reminder for a democratic government that helping its citizens only helps if it is designed to enable people to take care of themselves.        

The US Government was not founded to give people fish, or to even teach people how to fish. The Government was founded to allow people who could fish, or who wanted the chance to learn how to fish, and who were willing to work at fishing, the opportunity to get to the stream so they could fish.  

The Government was founded to create the road and keep it clear of obstacles so anyone could get to the shoreline, to protect against and to punish anyone who tried to steal away the fish from those who caught it, to stop one fisherman from blocking access to the stream by others and hogging all the fishing for himself or his friends, and to keep reckless or irresponsible people from doing anything that would poison the fish and destroy the resource for all.

In short, the US Government was founded to ensure everyone has an equal opportunity to take care of themselves. 

The US Government was not founded, however, to take away the fish caught by the successful fishermen to give to any unsuccessful fishermen, to others who never even bothered trying to fish, or to those who for some reason were incapable of fishing. In fact, that is the very opposite of what the founding of the USA was about.

The Founding Fathers knew that any decisions to share the wealth of fish caught was a social, religious, or moral issue to be worked out between the people themselves, not orchestrated by the government. To make it the government's role is to transform democracy into socialism, regardless of how well-intentioned the motivation.