Rush Limbaugh’s take on Newt’s last debate
By Tom Quiner
Newt Gingrich was strong in last week’s debate. Rush had this to say:
“And we talked about it during the 2008 campaign. Nobody wanted to hear it. The hopey-change thing was just too big of a theme. It was absorbing all the energy. But it was shocking, the details of this story. He also — Newt had some absolutely brilliant conservative thoughts on education and on our schools. Newt noted three fundamental mistakes on education. They assume that teachers unions care about kids. He talked about this self-esteem nonsense where kids hear about self-esteem, but they can’t even spell it. They’re taught that they have self-esteem, they’re taught that they’re wonderful little darlings, they’re taught all this, but they can’t even spell the word “self-esteem”!”
What is self esteem? It is a favorable opinion of oneself.
What is self respect? It is a proper sense of one’s own dignity and integrity.
A philosophy evolved in recent decades that somehow self-esteem can be imposed from the outside if you just keep telling a kid he or she is great. In fact, self esteem is a natural by product of self respect. One earns self respect by doing good things, by behaving well, by the making the world a better place.
Newt’s comments were spot on in the Arizona debate.
Tangentially, there’s an interesting point about self respect. If you don’t respect yourself how can you respect anyone else – or why would you choose to do so? It’s a simple matter of people unclear on the concept – and what is worse – uncaring about it.
Go Newt!
Obviously juwannadoright had teachers that cared enough to educate rather than impose politically correct narcissistic rhetoric upon a captured elementary school audiance. I agree with her assessment but I had to look up the word “tangentially”. 🙂
I have long abhorred the whole “self esteem” thing, since “self esteem” is just a euphemism for self-absorption. Self esteem has absolutely no correlation to good character; many criminals and sociopaths have very high self esteem. Furthermore, children don’t need to be taught to be self-absorbed; it comes naturally. It’s one of those things, like bed wetting and tantrum throwing, that they need to grow out of, and it’s the job of adults to help them grow out of it. Children need to learn to directed outward, not inward, to esteem other people, and to be considerate and unselfish and magnanimous. In other words, they need to learn humility, which is the opposite of self-absorption. And humility, as someone once said, is not thinking poorly of yourself, it’s freedom from thinking about yourself at all.
You state it well. Thanks for commenting.