Our Society Has Torn Down Too Many Restraints on Bad Behavior
The real root cause of the latest Trump assassination attempt
These days, when people think of “fantasy books,” they tend to think of kids’ series like Harry Potter, but when I was younger, I used to love the old books aimed at adults like Michael Moorcock’s Elric series, Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd, and the Gray Mouser series from the sixties and seventies. Most of all, I loved Robert Howard’s original Conan books from the thirties. I read those 12 books multiple times and read the dozens of Conan books that came after, which were of uneven quality. I read the comics, the graphic novels, and of course, loved Arnold Swarzennegger’s portrayal of him in the movies. Although this quote from the movies seems to stick in the public’s consciousness…
…there were many, many other great lines from those books. After the latest assassination attempt on Donald Trump and the endless encouragement of political violence before and after it by the Left, one of those quotes from Conan came back to me because it’s very relevant to what’s happening in America today:
Online, especially on forums or places like X, extraordinarily rude behavior is extremely common. Ever notice it’s a lot less common in person? Personally, I can’t remember the last time a human being went out of their way to be deliberately rude when we were face-to-face. It literally may have been DECADES ago. So, why is there such a big difference between the real world and online? Well, because if two people are talking face-to-face, their fists are in range of each other’s noses.
This reminds me of the punk on the Internet who was trolling boxer Curtis Woodward. After Woodward lost a title fight, the troll mocked him online. Woodward offered to pay anyone who would give him the troll’s address. Someone did, then Woodward DROVE TO HIS HOUSE to give him a beating and posted pictures of his street to prove he was there. Suddenly, the troll’s attitude changed:
“I am sorry it’s getting a bit out of hand,” he wrote. “I am in the wrong. I accept that.” He added that the abuse was merely a “bit of harmless fun.”
Woodward left without pummeling him, but it still makes for a great story… and you know what? It’s HEALTHY for trolls to fear being beaten up. Some people may find that statement shocking. “Why, no one should fear violence, John!” I disagree with that statement, but to explain why, I’m going to need to explain something about the way societies restrain bad behavior.
Contrary to what many people believe, the law is one of the WORST WAYS to prevent behavior detrimental to society. That’s because the law is supposed to be the LAST RESORT. The thing you use to deal with ne'er-do-wells and hardened criminals who are unable to fit into lawful society. You know Billy the Kid, Jeffrey Dahmer, Al Capone, Jeffrey Epstein, Charles Ponzi and that no good Hatfield clan that makes moonshine, steals horses and gets into blood feuds with their neighbors.
When the law moves to the frontlines and becomes the determinant of what’s allowable and what isn’t, you end up with an immoral society barely held in check by legalism. You have people acting as if changing the law changes what’s right, people finding loopholes in the law, and all sorts of horrible behavior that’s justified by the fact that “It’s not illegal.”
On the other hand, speaking of morals, if you are truly surrounded by genuinely moral people, you almost don’t need laws at all. If you let me pick 100 people and stuck all of us together in some little community for a decade, where no one else came or went, there would be no murders or rapes and the number of thefts would be zero unless someone borrowed a lawnmower and forgot to bring it back. This is why even diehard atheists should want to encourage Christianity, even if they don’t believe in God. It makes the people around you more likely to be moral, which means less strife, crime, and problems.
We also can’t forget mores, customs, and societal expectations.
For example, when I went to Tokyo, one of the things that stuck out to me was that the Japanese were such sticklers about following rules that NOBODY would cross the street until the sign changed, telling them they were allowed to do so. It didn’t matter if it was day or night, there was nobody coming, or there was 1 person or 50 people waiting, they did not move until the light changed and told them they could go. It’s no coincidence that Tokyo is arguably the safest large city in the world.
Going in a different direction, there used to be certain almost universal assumptions around dating. If let’s say a woman got drunk with a man, made out with him in public, and willingly went back to his room with him, nobody would take her seriously if she later said that she didn’t intend to sleep with him. Along similar lines, if you spat at a cop or let’s say, told him to go, “f*** himself,” you could expect to receive an ass-whooping. There was a time in American history when divorce was considered a personal failure, having children outside of marriage was viewed extremely negatively, and people didn’t publicly discuss race, politics, or religion.
We could go on, but do you know what all these things really were? Societally enforced guideposts designed to keep people out of trouble and keep our culture functional. Know what else? They worked EXTREMELY WELL. As a society and as individuals, we would be much, much better off if all of these expectations were still in place.
So why aren’t they?
Because there were real, but relatively rare examples where these societal rules created unfair situations. Because we became hyper-individualistic. Because too many of us rejected our culture, our morality, and the customs that made us successful, to do what sounded good instead.
That led to what we have now. People being deluged in hateful comments online, open calls for attacking and murdering people who disagree with the Left, complete disrespect for the police, our leaders, our religions, and our nation. Far too often today, the law is used to protect the worst of us. It’s, “I’m legally allowed to block your car, call you slurs, call for your death, and push destructive ideas, but you’re not legally allowed to stop me from doing it.”
This is not an improvement; it’s a degeneration of our civilization. We should have higher moral standards, expect more from people, and be much more willing to collectively punish people who don’t meet those moral expectations.
Do you think the world would be better or worse if we aimed the same kind of disdain at people who call for political violence as we do at people who abuse animals? Do you think life would be better or worse if we LOOKED DOWN on people who had kids out of wedlock or got divorced for frivolous reasons? Do you think we’d be safer or in more danger if the police started using nightsticks on people who cursed them out or threw things at them? You can pretend otherwise if you want, but all of us know the answer.
We’re a society that needs more shame, more judgment, and more restraints on bad behavior. Until those things start happening, ultimately, you won’t see our degenerate culture really move back in the right direction again.
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.