I’ve had the hardest time understanding why the “Mona Lisa” is always smiling. Sure,… I’ve had the hardest time understanding why the “Mona Lisa” is always smiling. Sure, “The Da Vinci Code” went bigger than The Beatles for a while, but she does have to live in France. In case you care about Europe even less than I do, France is currently on strike. Seriously, the entire country is looking like an American manufacturing plant after George Bush got hold of the economy. And why is the land of the Eiffel Tower and unshaven armpits on strike? Well, the government is trying to — hold your breath — raise the retirement age from 60 to 62.

62? 62! If the retirement age was left up to Penn State football, the French wouldn’t be able to retire until they hit ripe old 90. Apparently, though, the French were too busy banning burqas and surrendering to actually do work.

The fact is that France just isn’t badass. It takes a work ethic to be badass. They strike faster than a teachers’ union at national performance test time. Have the French really taken to the streets en masse because of a two-year increase in the retirement age?

Despite my slightly less than friendly observations of the French, France’s and other European blunders are important in demonstrating to our country what not to do, especially when it comes to government spending.

Forget France for awhile. The EU is losing money almost as quickly as the Democrats are losing votes.

In addition, Greece just lost its cool over the summer. Greece only avoided defaulting on all of its debt after receiving a multinational bailout that should have left American International Group executives foaming at the mouth. The bailout totaled more than $110 billion, and took place solely to calm fears of a default. Yes, the Parthenon looks really awesome and it clearly took some serious effort, but you should have spent just a little time working on building a bank. I realize that you created democracy, and you know, thanks for that, but please pick up an accounting course!

And Greece isn’t the only one.

Spain and Italy, the countries that made up the core of Europe for so long, have been throwing around cash money like, well, the liberals in Congress. The economic state of Europe is scary. Not like Halloween haunted house scary, but more like Sarah Palin and Christine O’Donnell running for president together scary.

The years of socialistic policies and month-long siestas have caught up with Europe. You want nationalized health care? That’s awesome. You want paid vacations and free university educations? Even better. You want to work 20 hours a week and retire at 45 to play bocce?

The lessons of Europe are extremely important for America — we need to take them as a wakeup call to take caution. I love Obama and I can get more liberal than John Edwards. However, I can also do math. The way that government spending is going is out of control. All America has to do is look across the pond to see what’s coming. No, we don’t need a Tea Party. Please put down the misinformed sign that you Tea Partiers just made and allow us to focus on the reality of what lies ahead for our country.

In a perfect world, the United States would ensure for all of its citizens the basic necessities of life. That list would include health care, post-secondary education and a manageable workday with livable wages. Unfortunately, issuing additional taxes on the rich just because they’re rich isn’t the way to go about it. Continually passing legislation that is both fiscally irresponsible and unfeasible isn’t the way to go about it either. We need to prioritize and reevaluate spending in our country to reel in the national debt and avoid the fate of our Western allies.

Our current budget looks horrendous. Luckily, we’re not looking like France yet.

There are going to be some tough choices coming up for the United States. As a liberal who would love to see this country embrace some extremely expensive endeavors, I will be the first to admit that we just aren’t fiscally capable of making all of these sweeping reforms. We all want to live in that figurative big house on the hill, but if we can’t afford the mortgage, we just have to accept it. It’s time to look into the future — a future that nobody is going to particularly like — and face it the right way. It’s not going to be easy, but we can’t shut down our country like France. After all, our version of Notre Dame is better at football.

E-mail Andrew at [email protected].