Our public schools has contributed much to this problem.
Back in the 60s and 70s, when I was in school, if you beat down your bully, the school administration took no disciplinary action. Sometimes it to ok a group of people that were being bullied to take down the bully if he was too much for one to handle. The bully learned a hard lesson. Sometimes it took many beat downs, but the message usually gets through.
I was fairly easy going in school and would ignore a lot. But, if pushed beyond my patience, I attacked with everything I had. It was such a surprise that the bully did not realize what had happened until he was on the ground with me on top pummeling him.
My mother witnessed this once when a neighbor boy that we played with nearly daily decided to push me down when I was riding my bike. My parents were great friends with his parents. The would trade off babysitting for each other. He would go into bully mode when his older brother was around. The kid ended up bleeding from his nose and mouth and both eyes swelled shut. It took a couple of weeks for the bruising to go away. Now, when I attacked, his big brother tried to jump in. My mother grabbed him and held him. After I finished with his younger brother, I was so enraged I went after the big brother, a year older and a head taller than me. He had ganged up on me in the past with his brother. He ended up with the same fate.
Their mother was not happy and came over to speak to my mother. My mother laid it on the line, if her boys do not want to get beaten and bloody, then they need to stop bullying others. My friendship ended with these boys. Their mother had nothing to do with us for several weeks but got over it. Their father gave them a good spanking to reinforce the lesson of bullying others will result in great pain.
We went to elementary school together, and they were bullying others at the school. That stopped after the beat down. Word got around that any kid bothered by these two just needed to come to me. The two brothers were scared of what I might do to them. By the end of the school year, they had moved away. Dad got tired of his wife always protecting her boys and going behind his back to undermine his authority so he divorced her. She got the boys. The boys eventually ended up in prison and crossed the wrong people who ended their lives.
Contrast this to the 2000s. My son had his own bully. The teachers and administrators did nothing to protect my son. My son was the youngest in his class. We could have held him back one year, but we started him in school because he was ready. He had been reading on his own since he was three. He was doing basic math at 4. That is what happens when you have two parents that are science teachers. He was socially more immature than the others in his class. So we worked on that with him.
I could not get him to defend himself from this bully. So, I enrolled him in martial arts and we went together. It took 3 years of working with him and practicing how to deal with a bully for the day to come. I got the call from school. I made it clear to my son, if he ever finds himself in trouble, just repeat the line I will not say anything until my dad gets here. Then just stop talking. He did it even though he was threatened with suspension and other consequences.
When I arrived, I asked about the bully. I had been there many times about this kid hurting my son. All I got were excuses and the administration wanting my son to have session with the school psychologist and the other boy so they could learn to be friends. I asked the school psychologist, does my son have the right to be friends with those he wants and to not be friends with those he does not like. After a bit of back and forth, she conceded that my son should not be forced to be friends with people he does not like or get along with. It helped when I suggested that the principal, a liberal white woman, and I get counseling so we can be friends. That was not going to happen, in her mind, I was the enemy.
I really upset the principal when I filed a police report with the school district police (they have their own police force that are members of the district police force and the city police force). They asked the principal some tough questions about why she was not filing reports on this kid assaulting other kids. Her job with the district ended at the end of the school year.
Now contrast that to today. At a school I was teaching at 5 years ago, a student with schizophrenia had assaulted at least 5 students I knew of, and put all 5 in the hospital for several weeks. The principal protected him because his mother was a teacher in the district, and he was enrolled in the program at the school for kids with behavioral issues. She wanted the extra money the school got from that program.
One time, the kid went off on a female student at lunch and her older brother, a football player, was nearby. The brother jumped in and ended up putting this kid into the hospital with major injuries and broken bones. The principal was going for expulsion. She wanted the brother arrested and had a police report filed. I went to our SRO and told her to have the detectives look into the schizophrenic kid’s disciplinary record at school and made her aware that this is the same kid that had put a few students in the hospital already this year. She had the detective speak with me. The SRO did have access to the school records for students and did some research. She gave that information to the detective.
After an investigation, the detective recommended to the DA the brother not be charged, he was clearly defending his sister and if he had not stepped in, she would have been seriously injured.
With that, his parents hired an attorney and fought the expulsion. The district did expel him, but they appealed to the school board. The school board made a wise decision, they overturned the expulsion, paid for tutoring at a private tutoring company so he could catch up with his studies, and came to a financial settlement with the family. If this made it to court, the district would lose.
Unfortunately, they did not change their policy that all participants in a fight are to be put up for expulsion and deny all claims of self-defense. Unfortunately, most parents do not fight this.
We have a conflict mediation process which often makes the bully out to be in the right and the victim in the wrong. The victim is told that if he ever gets into a physical altercation, it will be expulsion.
This is going on nationwide. No wonder we have had many school shootings done by the kid that was being bullied and blamed for it. There has been a sharp rise in suicides by these same students.
I never saw myself as a victim, I did what I had to do to protect myself and my siblings. I had a few scrapes with bullies and was never disciplined by the school for it.
My son eventually learned to be more subtle in his use of martial arts so things happened so fast that nobody really saw what happened. I knee move up close and personal is often overlooked by witnesses because they are watching the hands. It also helped that he eventually hit a growth spurt and was the tallest in his class. The bullies just stayed away.
Today, I have many students who have severe anxiety because they can do nothing about their bullies. Parents are wimps and refuse to fight the school, the students are wimps and do not fight back for fear of expulsion. An expulsion pretty much excludes you from admission to a large number of colleges. It is a legal liability for the colleges.
The jerks continue to escalate because they never face real consequences. The best consequences are those applied immediately and cause severe pain.
In a psychology class 40 years ago, I learned something that has stuck with me. The professor said that most people do not change their behavior until they experience a significant emotional event.
We know that alcoholics and drug addicts usually have to hit rock bottom before they seek help. Unfortunately, for many, rock bottom is death. Rock bottom is a significant emotional event in one’s life.
Today, we have the liberals telling us that kindness and love will save the addicts and criminals. Life does not work that way. When someone is intent on causing harm, they only thing that stops that person is physical violence that is administered immediately. Love and kindness does not stop a murderer, rapist, or home invader. I bullet will. That is called justifiable homicide.
I was born and raised during a time when society worked together to enforce adherence to the societal norms. If a kid cursed and adult, the adult would simply backhand him and nobody, including his parents would object. In fact, the parents usually applied more disciplinary action. I had my behind warmed over a few times and I deserved it. It also made me realize, when nothing else caught my attention, that I had to follow the societal norms. I eventually learned that this was so we could have a safe society with people being concerned about others. It is not always about me. It is about learning to get along with others in our society while protecting society from the criminals.
Can you imagine if the leftists dream of no police should come to fruition? What would society look like then?
Without the rule of law we degenerate to the law of survival of the fittest ... or to who shoots the straightest.
What we should seek is the return to the morals of the 50's, which is impossible since the explosion of technology threw up the 7" screen of anonymity between us.
I remember back to the 70s and 80s when there was a big push to get rid of the death penalty. One of the reasons was it was not a deterrent. No law is a deterrent! Criminals always think they are smart enough to get away with it.
The death penalty is to permanently remove those criminals that have committed such an heinous crime that they need to pay the ultimate price and not be a burden on society. Life in prison without the possibility of parole means the taxpayers have to support them and, as we know all too well, the criminal retains the possibility of parole as long as he is breathing.
Now, I am for a death penalty case getting the highest level of review to ensure a mistake was not made and the wrong person was convicted. There needs to be a time limit, say 5 years. The appeals process needs to be speeded up greatly.
Also, we need to accept that death cannot rarely be made pain free. The criminal though never worried about the pain he caused his victim before they died. Most relish inflicting pain. I am for a .22 to the back of the head. It is quick and cheap. The brain is destroyed so there is nothing left to sense.
All of those old rules come out of what the left stated calling racist, patriarchal, misogynistic, blah, blah, blah, so they purposely “taught” us, lectured us, and browbeat us into accepting people for who they were no matter what they did or how they acted, as if the losers and degenerates amongst us were our equals. Just another one of the left’s many methods to attack and destroy our country and society.
As Heinlein famously observed, "An armed society is a polite society." People don't insult you to your face if they think there's even a chance you might whip out your sword or pistol and teach them a lesson they'll never forget.
Pournelle also observed--and this is an insight I hadn't considered until I heard it from him--"The police aren't here to protect the citizenry from the criminals. They're here to protect the criminals from the citizenry."
Until Robert Peel instituted the Metropolitan Police in the mid-19th century, there WERE no "official" police forces. Obviously if you were a man of privilege or position--or even "mere" wealth--you probably had a retinue of companions who helped you defend yourself from criminals. But for most men? Nuh-uh. They had to rely on their reputation among their friends and neighbors if someone got too frisky with them.
I can already hear the bleatings: "...but, but...that's vigilante justice you're talking about!" Well, this just in--for all but the last two hundred years or so, it was also the societal norm.
Even in this country: Hamilton died in a duel. Andrew Jackson was (IIRC) involved in a duel or two himself. Preston Brooks took direct action after taking umbrage at Charles Sumner's defamation of South Carolina and the slave system. And I imagine there were plenty of others.
Final thought, which I believe originated with Frederick Douglass, is that--even in a society ostensibly based on the rule of law--there is a recourse beyond the law, encapsulated in the "Four Boxes of Liberty": the soap-box; the ballot-box; the jury-box...and--last but by no means least--the ammo box.
I agree with both of you. I have hummed along to Gene Pitney's "The Man who Shot Liberty Valence" many times as I see the outrageous buffoonery online and on TV. Unless you want to be brutalized by the lawless, you'd best be using EDC, esp. in certain cities in modern America. Is it ideal? No, but increasingly it seems the only rational recourse and may very well reintroduce some circumspection, politeness, and/or at very least allow for the elimination of some aggressive trash.
There's a documentary called 'Ice Guardians' that focuses on the roles of enforcers in hockey. An underlying premise is that the superstars of yesterday such as Wayne Gretzky didn't suffer from the same cheap shots and related injuries that today's players do because there was somebody there to hold you accountable if you tried.
The abuse of law is rampant, in so many ways. The wealthy and politically powerful abuse it to force others to stand powerless as they cheat and abuse society. The Left simply contends the law cannot be applied against those whom they want to use at the ballot box, or in the outrage media. As a law school graduate, I've seen the damage done by activist judges in contravention of everything we were taught. When the law is an ass, obeying it seems like a fool's game. The "A religious people..." statement is being borne out in real time, and that critical factor is declining rapidly, esp. post Covid. That is why for me the 2d has become the most important amendment. Less cops? Less jails? Gotta be able to protect oneself, now.
The police and the lawful have been hobbled by legalities that are anathema to peace keeping. They are so afraid of themselves being charged with breaking some unrealistic and stupid law, they allow law-breakers to hurl insults, expletives, fists, weapons and objects at them while the culprits resist commands and attempt assault without fear of recourse. Watch a few of those cop-cam videos, if you can stand it, and you’ll see what I mean.
Damn right. In the loverly leftist enclave of Madison, the common council once led the charge for police body cams, post Michael Brown and George Floyd, and another deranged local black man who got high in traffic, fled into an apartment building, then threw the pursuing policeman down a stairwell and got shot for it. Only a year or so afterwards, they started agitating for the removal of those cameras. Yup, the exact footage that has led to so much "Black Fatigue-" seems their favorite oppressed, victim group didn't come off too well. Just last week, they voted to get rid of funding for the license plate readers the police are using to track felons with outstanding warrants, and car thieves. "School Resources Officers" were also eliminated from the budget (it was deemed racist because a disproportionate percentage of the trouble makers were racial minorities), until the school shootings in TX, TN, and FL caused parental backlash.
Our public schools has contributed much to this problem.
Back in the 60s and 70s, when I was in school, if you beat down your bully, the school administration took no disciplinary action. Sometimes it to ok a group of people that were being bullied to take down the bully if he was too much for one to handle. The bully learned a hard lesson. Sometimes it took many beat downs, but the message usually gets through.
I was fairly easy going in school and would ignore a lot. But, if pushed beyond my patience, I attacked with everything I had. It was such a surprise that the bully did not realize what had happened until he was on the ground with me on top pummeling him.
My mother witnessed this once when a neighbor boy that we played with nearly daily decided to push me down when I was riding my bike. My parents were great friends with his parents. The would trade off babysitting for each other. He would go into bully mode when his older brother was around. The kid ended up bleeding from his nose and mouth and both eyes swelled shut. It took a couple of weeks for the bruising to go away. Now, when I attacked, his big brother tried to jump in. My mother grabbed him and held him. After I finished with his younger brother, I was so enraged I went after the big brother, a year older and a head taller than me. He had ganged up on me in the past with his brother. He ended up with the same fate.
Their mother was not happy and came over to speak to my mother. My mother laid it on the line, if her boys do not want to get beaten and bloody, then they need to stop bullying others. My friendship ended with these boys. Their mother had nothing to do with us for several weeks but got over it. Their father gave them a good spanking to reinforce the lesson of bullying others will result in great pain.
We went to elementary school together, and they were bullying others at the school. That stopped after the beat down. Word got around that any kid bothered by these two just needed to come to me. The two brothers were scared of what I might do to them. By the end of the school year, they had moved away. Dad got tired of his wife always protecting her boys and going behind his back to undermine his authority so he divorced her. She got the boys. The boys eventually ended up in prison and crossed the wrong people who ended their lives.
Contrast this to the 2000s. My son had his own bully. The teachers and administrators did nothing to protect my son. My son was the youngest in his class. We could have held him back one year, but we started him in school because he was ready. He had been reading on his own since he was three. He was doing basic math at 4. That is what happens when you have two parents that are science teachers. He was socially more immature than the others in his class. So we worked on that with him.
I could not get him to defend himself from this bully. So, I enrolled him in martial arts and we went together. It took 3 years of working with him and practicing how to deal with a bully for the day to come. I got the call from school. I made it clear to my son, if he ever finds himself in trouble, just repeat the line I will not say anything until my dad gets here. Then just stop talking. He did it even though he was threatened with suspension and other consequences.
When I arrived, I asked about the bully. I had been there many times about this kid hurting my son. All I got were excuses and the administration wanting my son to have session with the school psychologist and the other boy so they could learn to be friends. I asked the school psychologist, does my son have the right to be friends with those he wants and to not be friends with those he does not like. After a bit of back and forth, she conceded that my son should not be forced to be friends with people he does not like or get along with. It helped when I suggested that the principal, a liberal white woman, and I get counseling so we can be friends. That was not going to happen, in her mind, I was the enemy.
I really upset the principal when I filed a police report with the school district police (they have their own police force that are members of the district police force and the city police force). They asked the principal some tough questions about why she was not filing reports on this kid assaulting other kids. Her job with the district ended at the end of the school year.
Now contrast that to today. At a school I was teaching at 5 years ago, a student with schizophrenia had assaulted at least 5 students I knew of, and put all 5 in the hospital for several weeks. The principal protected him because his mother was a teacher in the district, and he was enrolled in the program at the school for kids with behavioral issues. She wanted the extra money the school got from that program.
One time, the kid went off on a female student at lunch and her older brother, a football player, was nearby. The brother jumped in and ended up putting this kid into the hospital with major injuries and broken bones. The principal was going for expulsion. She wanted the brother arrested and had a police report filed. I went to our SRO and told her to have the detectives look into the schizophrenic kid’s disciplinary record at school and made her aware that this is the same kid that had put a few students in the hospital already this year. She had the detective speak with me. The SRO did have access to the school records for students and did some research. She gave that information to the detective.
After an investigation, the detective recommended to the DA the brother not be charged, he was clearly defending his sister and if he had not stepped in, she would have been seriously injured.
With that, his parents hired an attorney and fought the expulsion. The district did expel him, but they appealed to the school board. The school board made a wise decision, they overturned the expulsion, paid for tutoring at a private tutoring company so he could catch up with his studies, and came to a financial settlement with the family. If this made it to court, the district would lose.
Unfortunately, they did not change their policy that all participants in a fight are to be put up for expulsion and deny all claims of self-defense. Unfortunately, most parents do not fight this.
We have a conflict mediation process which often makes the bully out to be in the right and the victim in the wrong. The victim is told that if he ever gets into a physical altercation, it will be expulsion.
This is going on nationwide. No wonder we have had many school shootings done by the kid that was being bullied and blamed for it. There has been a sharp rise in suicides by these same students.
I never saw myself as a victim, I did what I had to do to protect myself and my siblings. I had a few scrapes with bullies and was never disciplined by the school for it.
My son eventually learned to be more subtle in his use of martial arts so things happened so fast that nobody really saw what happened. I knee move up close and personal is often overlooked by witnesses because they are watching the hands. It also helped that he eventually hit a growth spurt and was the tallest in his class. The bullies just stayed away.
Today, I have many students who have severe anxiety because they can do nothing about their bullies. Parents are wimps and refuse to fight the school, the students are wimps and do not fight back for fear of expulsion. An expulsion pretty much excludes you from admission to a large number of colleges. It is a legal liability for the colleges.
The jerks continue to escalate because they never face real consequences. The best consequences are those applied immediately and cause severe pain.
In a psychology class 40 years ago, I learned something that has stuck with me. The professor said that most people do not change their behavior until they experience a significant emotional event.
We know that alcoholics and drug addicts usually have to hit rock bottom before they seek help. Unfortunately, for many, rock bottom is death. Rock bottom is a significant emotional event in one’s life.
Today, we have the liberals telling us that kindness and love will save the addicts and criminals. Life does not work that way. When someone is intent on causing harm, they only thing that stops that person is physical violence that is administered immediately. Love and kindness does not stop a murderer, rapist, or home invader. I bullet will. That is called justifiable homicide.
I was born and raised during a time when society worked together to enforce adherence to the societal norms. If a kid cursed and adult, the adult would simply backhand him and nobody, including his parents would object. In fact, the parents usually applied more disciplinary action. I had my behind warmed over a few times and I deserved it. It also made me realize, when nothing else caught my attention, that I had to follow the societal norms. I eventually learned that this was so we could have a safe society with people being concerned about others. It is not always about me. It is about learning to get along with others in our society while protecting society from the criminals.
Today, we protect criminals.
Can you imagine if the leftists dream of no police should come to fruition? What would society look like then?
Without the rule of law we degenerate to the law of survival of the fittest ... or to who shoots the straightest.
What we should seek is the return to the morals of the 50's, which is impossible since the explosion of technology threw up the 7" screen of anonymity between us.
I remember back to the 70s and 80s when there was a big push to get rid of the death penalty. One of the reasons was it was not a deterrent. No law is a deterrent! Criminals always think they are smart enough to get away with it.
The death penalty is to permanently remove those criminals that have committed such an heinous crime that they need to pay the ultimate price and not be a burden on society. Life in prison without the possibility of parole means the taxpayers have to support them and, as we know all too well, the criminal retains the possibility of parole as long as he is breathing.
Now, I am for a death penalty case getting the highest level of review to ensure a mistake was not made and the wrong person was convicted. There needs to be a time limit, say 5 years. The appeals process needs to be speeded up greatly.
Also, we need to accept that death cannot rarely be made pain free. The criminal though never worried about the pain he caused his victim before they died. Most relish inflicting pain. I am for a .22 to the back of the head. It is quick and cheap. The brain is destroyed so there is nothing left to sense.
Excellent, John.
All of those old rules come out of what the left stated calling racist, patriarchal, misogynistic, blah, blah, blah, so they purposely “taught” us, lectured us, and browbeat us into accepting people for who they were no matter what they did or how they acted, as if the losers and degenerates amongst us were our equals. Just another one of the left’s many methods to attack and destroy our country and society.
Amen to all that, brother.
As Heinlein famously observed, "An armed society is a polite society." People don't insult you to your face if they think there's even a chance you might whip out your sword or pistol and teach them a lesson they'll never forget.
Pournelle also observed--and this is an insight I hadn't considered until I heard it from him--"The police aren't here to protect the citizenry from the criminals. They're here to protect the criminals from the citizenry."
Until Robert Peel instituted the Metropolitan Police in the mid-19th century, there WERE no "official" police forces. Obviously if you were a man of privilege or position--or even "mere" wealth--you probably had a retinue of companions who helped you defend yourself from criminals. But for most men? Nuh-uh. They had to rely on their reputation among their friends and neighbors if someone got too frisky with them.
I can already hear the bleatings: "...but, but...that's vigilante justice you're talking about!" Well, this just in--for all but the last two hundred years or so, it was also the societal norm.
Even in this country: Hamilton died in a duel. Andrew Jackson was (IIRC) involved in a duel or two himself. Preston Brooks took direct action after taking umbrage at Charles Sumner's defamation of South Carolina and the slave system. And I imagine there were plenty of others.
Final thought, which I believe originated with Frederick Douglass, is that--even in a society ostensibly based on the rule of law--there is a recourse beyond the law, encapsulated in the "Four Boxes of Liberty": the soap-box; the ballot-box; the jury-box...and--last but by no means least--the ammo box.
I would be 100% in favor of dueling being a legal, recognized thing again.
I agree with both of you. I have hummed along to Gene Pitney's "The Man who Shot Liberty Valence" many times as I see the outrageous buffoonery online and on TV. Unless you want to be brutalized by the lawless, you'd best be using EDC, esp. in certain cities in modern America. Is it ideal? No, but increasingly it seems the only rational recourse and may very well reintroduce some circumspection, politeness, and/or at very least allow for the elimination of some aggressive trash.
There's a documentary called 'Ice Guardians' that focuses on the roles of enforcers in hockey. An underlying premise is that the superstars of yesterday such as Wayne Gretzky didn't suffer from the same cheap shots and related injuries that today's players do because there was somebody there to hold you accountable if you tried.
The abuse of law is rampant, in so many ways. The wealthy and politically powerful abuse it to force others to stand powerless as they cheat and abuse society. The Left simply contends the law cannot be applied against those whom they want to use at the ballot box, or in the outrage media. As a law school graduate, I've seen the damage done by activist judges in contravention of everything we were taught. When the law is an ass, obeying it seems like a fool's game. The "A religious people..." statement is being borne out in real time, and that critical factor is declining rapidly, esp. post Covid. That is why for me the 2d has become the most important amendment. Less cops? Less jails? Gotta be able to protect oneself, now.
The police and the lawful have been hobbled by legalities that are anathema to peace keeping. They are so afraid of themselves being charged with breaking some unrealistic and stupid law, they allow law-breakers to hurl insults, expletives, fists, weapons and objects at them while the culprits resist commands and attempt assault without fear of recourse. Watch a few of those cop-cam videos, if you can stand it, and you’ll see what I mean.
Damn right. In the loverly leftist enclave of Madison, the common council once led the charge for police body cams, post Michael Brown and George Floyd, and another deranged local black man who got high in traffic, fled into an apartment building, then threw the pursuing policeman down a stairwell and got shot for it. Only a year or so afterwards, they started agitating for the removal of those cameras. Yup, the exact footage that has led to so much "Black Fatigue-" seems their favorite oppressed, victim group didn't come off too well. Just last week, they voted to get rid of funding for the license plate readers the police are using to track felons with outstanding warrants, and car thieves. "School Resources Officers" were also eliminated from the budget (it was deemed racist because a disproportionate percentage of the trouble makers were racial minorities), until the school shootings in TX, TN, and FL caused parental backlash.
If I didn’t know better, I’d call what you say unbelievable. The mendacity under the guise of racial parity is sickening.