Americans are worried. Americans are angry. Soaring gas prices are seriously crippling our economy and hitting us where it hurts the most -- in our pockets.

We have a right to be angry, but anger is no longer enough. It’s time for rage -- good, old American rage aimed at those elitist Democrats who prefer to see the folks beggared by soaring fuel prices rather than take the action this very real economic crisis demands.

Drill.

We know that the law of supply and demand is what’s causing gas prices to soar, but merely knowing the ultimate cause of the crisis is not enough. We need to know why the most obvious remedy -- one that promises to increase supply -- is being studiously avoided by the powers that be, Democrats in Congress.

Once Americans become aware of that reason, get out of the way because they will be at the gates of Capitol Hill armed with pitchforks and scythes like enraged villagers marching on Dracula’s castle, determined do wreak vengeance on the very people who refuse to act in the way current circumstances clearly demand.

The steady increase in gas prices can be stopped dead in its tracks, and rolled back to less onerous levels literally overnight. The Democrats in Congress have in their hands the magic wand they could easily wave, but they arrogantly refuse to use it. And so we continue to pay the price for their refusal to help their fellow Americans when they have the power to do so.

All they need to do is lift all moratoria and restrictions on domestic, offshore and Alaskan drilling for oil. That’s all. A quick wave of that magic wand is all that’s needed. But they will not act, and for that they must be made aware that they will pay a steep price at the polls for their refusal to act when action is desperately needed.

Make no mistake about it, the oh-so-liberal Democrats in the House and Senate, in the pockets of the super-rich environmentalists who scarcely conceal their contempt for their fellow humans and won’t be happy until every automobile is driven from America’s roads and highways, simply will not come to our aid.

As Marie-Antoinette is said to have remarked about her starving subjects who were demanding bread, “Let then eat cake,” our elected Democratic members of Congress are in effect saying of Americans, “Let them ride bikes.”

In their contemptuous sophistry their spokesmen sneer that opening the gates to domestic and offshore drilling would not yield results for 10 years. That excuse for inaction is insultingly deceptive. While it will take years to see our domestic supply of petroleum begin to take up the slack, the very declaration that the floodgates will be opened and America is on he way to independence from foreign oil will strike fear into the hearts of OPEC and the speculators who have driven the price of oil skyward.

Their reaction would be instantaneous -- they would increase production to the fullest extent possible, motivated by the knowledge that their stranglehold on supply faces its eventual demise, and gas prices at the pump would fall.

As economist Lawrence Kudlow wrote in his column, “An America First Energy Plan,” “As soon as you say, ‘End the drilling moratoriums,’ it is precisely those traders who will start selling oil contracts -- long before the first offshore oil barrels are delivered to market. If they see presidential leadership on oil and shale drilling, they will rapidly turn a bull market into a bear market.”

A partial answer to our immediate problem is at hand. The steady increase in pump prices can be halted and prices somewhat rolled back to a more acceptable level. Yet those Democrats who the people elected to Congress are turning their backs on the voters who sent them to Washington and coldly refusing to lift a finger to help the American people, preferring instead to lay the blame for the problem on big oil, speculators and every place but where it belongs. On themselves.

If that doesn’t enrage you, nothing will.

Payback time comes in November. Drive them out of office and elect people who will do what needs to be done. Drill, Drill, Drill!

Are you listening, John McCain?