Vote for me! I'll make you feel like total crap.

     This is why I would make a terrible politician. Sometimes the truth needs to be told, and those with the clout to get the truth out fail eternally to have the spine to tell it.     Sex education in the classroom continues to be a controversial issue. Should we have it or not? What age? At which point do we decide that our children are old enough to hear about things like contraception and other sex-related subjects, and is that age early enough to keep them from learning "from the streets" before we can teach them?     There is no controversy. All of this conveniently sidesteps the real issue. Like every other aspect of our lives, we have been programmed to let our nanny government take care of us and decide for us what is and is not suitable for ourselves, our families, and our happiness in general.     The plain truth is that it is, finally, the parent who are responsible for the education of their children. It is the parents, not the nanny government, that is to be ultimately held responsible for their children. If your children are ignorant of the dangers of sexual encounters, then it is not the nanny governments fault. Its not my fault. It is your fault. Just because this is a sensitive subject that many have difficulty communicating with their children, many feel that since the government is so willing to "take care of it" that all is well.

All is decidedly not well.     Raise your kids! Teach them what they need to know. Show them how to be good upstanding members of our society. Show them how to think for themselves and use common sense. And yes, if they disobey you, you may have to discipline them with something a bit more painful than "time out". Of all the places government intervenes in our lives, this is very likely the most offensive, not to mention the most destructive.

I can hear the rebuttals now...     "But we have to work all the time! We can't be there every single minute for our children because we're trying to make sure they get fed and clothed! I need the government to help out sometimes"    "I'm a single parent. I do everything I can (and try to do everything else) to make sure my child is taken care of. Sometimes there's just not enough hours in the day. I'm only one person."     Quit crying. Your sidestepping the issue. Our economy does not have to be one that requires 2 incomes to survive. It is a flaw in our increasingly beaurocratic government controlled economic system. When you should be telling the government to get the hell out of your buisiness, you are telling them that they need to further intrude. If this were a free market, parents could afford to have one full time parent, which, in my backward, archaic opinion, is still the best way to raise children. Single parents could afford decent private child care and education, and wouldn't have to frantically juggle bills and time which creates an overly-stressed person that cannot cope with one more difficult thing. You could actually talk to your children without having a nervous breakdown.     The government is essentially telling us daily that we should allow it to tell us how to educate our children, how to discipline our children, where to take our children, and broadly, how to raise our children. And what do we get for this? We give the government all of our money so that they can do these things for us. It educates our children into stupidity, turns our children into politically correct sheeple that cannot think for themselves, and alienates them from their parents. To alleviate these issues, the government reverently proclaims "just give us some more money, we need some more programs, some more laws, some more MORE, and it will be all OK. Judging the track record, forgive me if my opinion here differs from that assessment.     Maybe what I'm saying is entirely wrong. Maybe there is a way to fix these problems and the way I propose is not it. Fine. At least admit that the way in place now is definitely not working, but instead making everything worse as the days go by. Its time to change this. Further funding these doomed child-related programs out of some misplaced sentiment for the children is not the answer. Giving the government the reigns in determining what is most beneficial for the education, development, and general well-being for our children is failing miserably.     As that most eloquent (if morally deprived) politician so rightly stated: "Its the economy, stupid". The economy. We need a free market economy. We need to make our own tough decisions. We need to decide that there is never any place in our news or our lives for numbers (dollars) of astronomical proportions. We should never have to hear the phrase "trillion dollars" in any context. That is what's wrong with our economy. That's why our citizens struggle to survive. And it has been bleeding in on the success of our children and family stability for years. We need to end this.

Sometimes the truth hurts, but if your kid doesn't make it, and you feel there is someone to blame, blame yourself.