More so than anyone else, it is those on the political left actively promoting the fiction that \u201cbullying\u201d is both something new as well as a social<\/i> problem\u2014that is, the type of problem for which government alone can supply \u201cthe solution.\u201d<\/p>\n
My sympathy for the victims of bullies is as unqualified as is my contempt for their tormentors.\u00a0 However, no discussion of this issue can afford to neglect the following facts.<\/p>\n
First, what we today refer to as \u201cbullying\u201d is scarcely a recent phenomenon.\u00a0 For as long as there have been human beings there have been bullies.<\/p>\n
Second, not only is there nothing distinctive, much less unique, about our generation as far as bullying is concerned. \u00a0For as hurtful, nasty, and destructive as they undoubtedly are, today\u2019s bullies can hardly be said to be as savage and merciless as the \u201cbullies\u201d of those times and places of centuries and millennia past.<\/p>\n
Simply put, while the world remains broken, it was a much uglier place in the past when, for example, it wasn\u2019t at all uncommon for people to diligently guard themselves and their families at every moment of every day against being kidnapped and sold into slavery.<\/p>\n
Third, literally speaking, there is no more a \u201csolution\u201d to bullying than there is a solution to lust.\u00a0 And a government-imposed \u201c<\/i>solution\u201d <\/i>to the former is surely bound to be as abject a failure as a similar \u201csolution\u201d promises to be for the latter.<\/p>\n
The ideal \u201csolution\u201d to bullying<\/i> consists in victims standing up to bullies. <\/i><\/p>\n
Finally, it is more than a little ironic that the biggest bullies of them all are those who presume to lecture the rest of us on bullying.\u00a0 For all of the rhetoric enlisted in the service of advancing it, the left\u2019s agenda is <\/i>an agenda of bullying.<\/p>\n
After all, what is bullying but an activity by which the bully attempts to intimidate others for the sake of coercing them into doing his will.\u00a0 To the extent that the leftist\u2019s program requires ever greater concentrations of government power, i.e., government force, <\/i>for its execution, the leftist differs from your run of the mill bully only inasmuch as he has far more <\/i>opportunities to wreak havoc.\u00a0 But the leftist is also a bully par excellence inasmuch as he spares no occasion to assassinate the characters of his opponents\u2014you know, those who wish not to be coerced into parting with their legally acquired resources in order to subsidize someone else\u2019s ideas of what is \u201creally\u201d best for them.<\/p>\n
If those on the left are genuinely concerned about abating bullying, they need to start by removing the boulder in their own collective eye.<\/p>\n
They can do something about bullying, in other words, by abandoning their leftism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
More so than anyone else, it is those on the political left actively promoting the fiction that \u201cbullying\u201d is both something new as well as a social problem\u2014that is, the type of problem for which government alone can supply \u201cthe solution.\u201d My sympathy for the victims of bullies is as unqualified as is my contempt…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n