The Patriot Post® · Self-Esteem vs. Achievement

Columnist Arnold Ahlert: “[M]ost Americans, including the LIVs [‘low information voters’], are inundated by information. What they actually pay attention to is the great separator. We live in an age where the public school system promotes the maintenance of self-esteem over genuine achievement, and trains younger generations of Americans to feel, rather than to think. And now that everyone gets a trophy just for showing up, the distinction between banality and greatness no longer applies. Everyone is ‘special,’ and there is little reason to dwell on anything that occurs outside one’s personal universe. By accident or design, the Obama administration and their media lapdogs have been masters at exploiting this phenomenon. No sooner does one scandal arise than another takes its place, followed by another and another, seemingly ad infinitum. Keeping track requires genuine effort in an age where effort has given way to the cruise control of self-absorption. Those who remain genuinely outraged are either dismissed as over-wrought, or denigrated with a label such as ‘misogynist,’ ‘homophobe,’ ‘nativist,’ or ‘teabagger,’ with the understanding that, once labeled, no further thought is required.”