Using tough love

In family and relationship settings, tough love is applying firm resistance, and discipline if necessary, to correct wayward tendencies in children and other loved ones. In politics, tough love is a right-wing (and for many a more cynical) phenomenon about social correctness and responsibility. It is about cutting public spending, reducing taxation and pinpointing those deemed responsible for national economic difficulties. Almost inevitably, it targets the poor and those least socially able. It carries slogans such as 'replacing welfare with work', assuming that jobs can be found for such people and carers for their children.