The Country's Birthday and Indulgent Parenting

Conservatives and conservative-leaning people frequently pass around forwards bemoaning the lack of discipline and responsibility among today's youth, with forwarded emails purporting to be from such people as Bill Cosby, Bill Gates, George Carlin, Robin Williams etc. (Just Check Snopes.com) These emails are transparent attempts to undercut liberal ideas and reduce nuanced discussions to seemingly logical but actually illogical sound bites.

However, when one considers the nation to be a creation of the people, it stands to reason that the nation is our child, and if the nation is our child- our trust and responsibility-, whom we want to be the best it can be, and achieve great things, conservatives as parents seem to be sorely lacking. By retreating into hyperbole when discussing the nation, conservatives fall afoul of their very premise that holding a child (or nation) accountable for its failing is the best path to improvement. Some examples of "indulgent parenting":