It's time for America to experience some tough love, but instead we're being coddled. Think about it like parenting, but your kids in this case are our politicians.
Every day they're causing more trouble: underemployment is now at 15.6 percent, (by the way, that's the people who want jobs but have given up.) Our national debt is over $11 trillion and the people who can rescue us — the small business owners — are being told to redistribute their wealth instead of using it to create jobs.
Yet, we as parents sit back and basically laugh it off.
According to the latest FOX News Opinion Dynamics Poll only 42 percent of Americans are angry about the economy. Put down your abacus; that means that 58 percent of us are not angry that the government is running the money printing presses 24/7 and burying future generations in our selfish debt.
So now that our kids have realized that their parents are softies, they're going even further. Forget the small stuff — now it's time to fix the banks and the insurers and yes, even the auto industry.
But before we as parents hand the keys to the car over to our 7-year-old, shouldn't we at least figure out if they can really drive?
I mean, look at their track record:
In 1991, the lawmakers-only House bank had to be shut down, after House members bounced 8,300 bad checks worth hundreds of thousands of dollars — all of which were effectively, interest-free loans.
Then you have Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which cooked the books like Enron on steroids. Except, unlike Enron, who didn't cost us any direct money, this fraud will cost the taxpayers more than $240 billion, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.
You know what happened to Ken Lay (he was convicted and died before serving his time); meanwhile, Fannie's Franklin Raines pocketed nearly $100 million.
(By the way, last week the government quietly announced $210 million in bonuses for Fannie and Freddie employees, $45 million more than we wanted to string up the evil AIG executives for.)
Or, how about the broken education system that they created? The average American 15-year-old is now worse at math and science than kids from all 30 members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development — except (ready for this?) Portugal, Greece, Turkey and Mexico. Congratulations, America. No disrespect to the Turks, but that's quite the company we're now keeping.
When are we going to learn? I have no idea. Maybe never. But there's a lesson in Russia.
They have one of the world's least efficient car factories, with each of their workers producing just a quarter of the vehicles that we do each day, often with hand-held wrenches. These aren't the kinds of cars you cruise for babes in. It's the same boxy car they've been making for 40 years. It makes a Volvo look sporty.
Yet, despite their lack of innovation or efficiency, their government keeps pumping billions of dollars of aid in, with no strings attached.
Why? That's easy: To prevent 3 percent of their workforce from rioting like we've seen in France, China, the Ukraine and the Czech Republic.
Which brings me right back to the coddling.
It may seem easier to ratchet down our anger than it is to stick to our founding principles, but doing that will only make our leaders think they can keep pushing us even farther.
They can't.
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It's time to stop being the nice, ambivalent parent and instead start showing some tough-love. Even Mary Poppins told kids to take their medicine.
What do you think? Send your comments to: glennbeck@foxnews.com
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