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Home » American Ideals and Values » Self-Respect, the Virtue the People Gave Up in 2016

Self-Respect, the Virtue the People Gave Up in 2016

Last update December 23, 2016Leave a Comment

Are sore losers to blame for the black eye we gave ourselves in 2016, or does our lack of self-respect come from something more insidious? What happened this past year doesn’t portray Americans in a good light. It shames us.

We don’t often talk about the values and virtues we lost over the course of a year. If we did, self-respect would be the one that we decided to give up.

Self-respect means not playing by the rules?

Democratic reactionaries are still displaying their astounding lack of self-respect by acting like spoiled brats, blaming everyone and everything except themselves for losing their grip on America. Their unshakeable belief that only one ideology has a right to own our country and that its proponents have a right to control our people and their property has turned the nation upside down.

The First Lady joined in. She publicly expressed despair despite a future that will be a lot more lucrative than what her poster children can expect from eight years of her husband’s guidance. At least the president had enough self-respect to feign a call for reconciliation after the Democratic defeat. He reminded us that “we’re actually all on one team…”1

If that’s true and he’s also right that “we are Americans first,”2 how did we show it?

The world gets a good look at who we are

The world got a pretty good look at America in turmoil. By anyone’s definition we proved we aren’t what we claim to be.

We told the world that our new leader was dangerously inept while we created propaganda to make the lies seem true. Favorite phrases like “temperamentally unfit” and “uniquely unqualified”3 reflect on more than Trump. They implied that millions of us were hateful idiots for choosing him in the first place. Hillary Clinton even had a name for us: deplorables.

Democrats picked a fight with Russia over hacking. They did it in a way that emphasized our weakness even though they were the ones who claimed to be hacked. Now they accuse the president-elect of being weak on Putin while Obama is still in office, carrying out his Russian foreign policy strategy of threats and inaction.

The left still won’t admit that the DNC should have done a better job on cyber security. This is an issue Democrats have pushed in Congress for years. With James Comey to blame and bitter public figures like Bill Clinton4 perhaps they will never have to face reality. This is a case where the excuse is more valuable than fixing the problem.

Hateful racists or greedy deadbeats?

Long before the election Americans angrily anticipated discrimination by Trump. It hadn’t happened yet because he did not hold public office. That didn’t matter. Creating a problem is more useful politically than telling the truth. This was a good sideshow to successful demands for preferential treatment for highly politicized minorities like LGBTs and illegals.

Self-respect doesn’t imply that you are entitled to a piece of what others work hard to earn and a president who will take it for you. That didn’t stop millions from demanding a political victory so we could seize income to appease Americans who prefer handouts to self-respect. As a nation this degrades us. The majority of voters wanted the candidate who gave away the most for nothing and even that wasn’t generous enough for hard core Bernie supporters with time on their hands for demonstrations.

There is no self-respect in greed and even less when you offer society little or nothing to justify your worth except lots of free time to protest. Just being alive and relying on the grace of others to get by means you are only taking up space.

Even has-been celebrities came out of the woodwork to derail our political system. They appealed to electors to vote their conscience. Apparently they never considered that making more money than most by playing make believe doesn’t make you an expert on government or politics.

Lefty America looked for excuses to charge the nation with racism. Democrats asserted that hatred and discrimination are what America is all about. The Justice Department helped by misconstruing recent hate crime figures. Why? Because Democrats from top to bottom decided that a smear campaign was the best way to keep a Republican out of the White House.

This defines our loss of self-respect

The final word on our loss of self-respect came from the difference between the popular vote and Electoral College wins. Americans voted for a free ride agenda in overwhelming numbers. Some seemed to think they could take away the election victory. The effort failed, but the numbers on who voted for what will be with us forever. The majority of Americans were willing to trade a Democratic Party agenda based on handouts for not only their own self-respect, but the self-respect of the nation.

How do we excuse that?

Footnotes

Filed Under: American Ideals and Values

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