The End of Self-Esteem

As I sat through another interminable middle school award ceremony that lasted longer than the contest itself, I pondered how the self-esteem movement has wrecked this country. I had plenty of time since well-meaning adults were handing out participation medals to every eager participant.

This current financial calamity is the logical result of the self-esteem movement. Don't get me wrong, I think self-esteem is wonderful when sprung from a healthy self-image and buoyed by real accomplishments. But like diversity, it is worthless when pursued for its own sake.

Presidents Clinton and Bush were full of self-esteem as terrorists plotted the 9/11 attacks under the noses of our clueless but confident alphabet soup bureaucracies. The attacks themselves dented no one's esteem. Richard Clarke was the only government official to feel any blame and apologize as far as I can remember. President Bush awarded CIA Director George Tenant a medal for crying out loud!

Politicians of all all stripes are arrogant and proud as interest on the national debt and entitlement spending slowly, blob-like, consume the federal budget. And now the private sector and state governments follow suit with stumblebum mismanagement that has wrecked the nation's economy. Finally, individual citizens soil themselves after gorging on credit, new cars and McMansions. And mommy government will pick them up and clean them off. Don't want them to feel bad...

Like spoiled children in a no-fault world, this endless chain of fools lines up to receive participation prizes. Congress responds by creating the Federal Failure Reward Package on the advice of the same geniuses who caused the debacle.

This is how unbridled, unwarranted self-esteem destroys a culture that once believed in personal responsibility, thrift and self-reliance.

Outside of our military, self-esteem is turning this country into a colossal failure. Our car manufacturers are going broke while Japanese companies move in and make a profit, on our soil, with American workers. This shows that the average American still knows how to work and achieve, but our leaders and managers are egotistical losers too stupid to leverage it. What has any government agency or public enterprise done right in the last 8, 16, 20 years?

I could give a damn whether our next president is the messiah or the anti-Christ; all I want is competence from my government and our public institutions. If that's too much to ask, could they at least stop rewarding failure?

It's high time that people who screw up got the good old-fashioned ego-destroying, ass-kicking they deserve.

Did you lose a billion dollars today? Then your self-esteem should be crappy, and by the way, you're fired!

Bought more house and more car than you can afford? Looks like you may need to find a cardboard box underneath the interstate off-ramp. Your fellow citizens won't be paying for your stupidity.

You're a failure. Want a self-esteem builder? You can start by cleaning up your own mess. Our nation is out of balance: We have a surplus of self-esteem and a deficit of personal responsibility. Third-world countries are made of this.