RUTHFULLY YOURS

Patriotism is love of country, but the Left hates people who love their country. Especially if that country is America.

If you express noisy love for Castro’s Cuba, liberals have no problem with you. But if you love Amerika… no.

Self-esteem is love of self. It has pros and cons. You can have too much or too little, and after the liberal education establishment decided to disconnect self-esteem from actual achievement, chances are that you now have way too much. You’ve lost one of the great truths of real life, and as a result of your narcissism you will have to suffer, or make other people suffer, or both. We have seen a president of the United States with too much self-esteem, and a recent Democratic candidate who lost an election and still can’t figure out why. Their self-esteem is disconnected from their actual virtues, skills, and achievements.

The social psychologist Roy Baumeister has spent many years studying people with high and low self-esteem, and he writes in the journal Psychological Science.

“People high in self-esteem claim to be more likable and attractive, to have better relationships, and to make better impressions on others than people with low self-esteem, but objective measures disconfirm most of these beliefs. Narcissists are charming at first but tend to alienate others eventually. Self-esteem has not been shown to predict the quality or duration of relationships.”

If you’re as young as some of the F*K Amerika! athletes who are taking knees while getting million-dollar salaries today, chance are that you were a “self-esteem kid.” That is, your teachers didn’t care what you actually achieved in academic classes, because they believed (wrongly, as always), that self-esteem was a good thing by itself. Sane and rational cultures know better than that.

In reality-based cultures self-esteem is earned. It doesn’t come free with harebrained liberal fantasies. When self-esteem is earned, we learn how to take pride in our achievements, and to feel shame or guilt when we get things wrong. With luck, our teachers also encourage us to keep trying when we inevitably fail the first couple of times. Failure is no big deal, but giving up is.

Mass murderers often seem to feel no guilt at all. The Nazis at the Nuremburg war crimes trials are shown in news photos laughing it up. Stalinists these days are celebrated by NYT obits, and, not surprisingly, liberals are refinding their inner Stalinists again. Which is why “Antifas” in black and red Nazi-era colors look and act like sociopaths, with no capacity for guilt or shame.

POTUS Donald Trump is encouraging American sports fans to walk out, or stay away when their favorite, spoiled rich-kid athletes do their F-U gesture during our National Anthem.

It’s about time for common sense conservatives to speak up in a spoiled rich kid culture, where every politically-correct commissar is a spoiled rich kid.

The Antifas are SRK’s. The militant tenured-for-life college professors who whip up hatred for free speech and free thought are SRK’s. The editorial board of the New York Times is bubbling over with SRK’s. The faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, is nearly all spoiled rich kids.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were SRKs. Every Marxist Hollywood celebrity has become an SRK, whether they started out that way or not. In this culture of celebrity worship every big name in showbiz is an SRK, whether they deserve it or not.

Self-esteem is good, and patriotism is bad, according to these characters. But patriotism is the self-esteem of nations and peoples.

In Animal Farm, George Orwell wrote about the pig tyranny, “four legs good, two legs bad.”

If you’ve never read George Orwell, you’re probably a self-esteem kid.

Patriotism and gratitude to one’s parents and teachers are conservative virtues. The Founders knew all about that, and so did Abe Lincoln, who grew in dreadful poverty and taught himself by reading great books, including his basic political philosophy and legal education. And the King James Bible, of course.

One of the wisest books in history is The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, one of the virtuous Roman emperors. (There were some.)

The whole book is about filial gratitude, an overflow of praise for his parents, teachers, and other mentors.

And Shakespeare wrote King Lear on the opposite, the betrayal of Lear by his spoiled rich kid daughters:

Lear: …. the tempest in my mind

Doth from my senses take all feeling else

Save what beats there. Filial ingratitude!

Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand

For lifting food to’t? But I will punish home:

No, I will weep no more. In such a night

To shut me out! Pour on; I will endure.”

In such a night as this! O Regan, Goneril!

Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all,–

O, that way madness lies; let me shun that;

No more of that.”

But Lear has given away his power to punish and reward, and in the end, his Fool has the last word.

But then, Shakespeare was a great conservative, along with Marcus Aurelius and Confucius. But I guess our spoiled rich kid athletes were never told about that old stuff.