“Fighting is not the answer!” Except when it is.
Surefire way to peace. William T. Sherman understood.
“Fighting is not the answer” or “hitting someone will get you nowhere” are two refrains I often heard while growing up in school. After being so admonished the teacher (or principle if your crime were sufficiently grave), would hit the students rear end with a wooden stick and then send the chastised urchin back to class. Smarting in their seat, the student would then likely listen to a lecture centered on the terrible amount of casualties suffered at D-Day or how the bloodiest war in our nation’s history finally brought an end to slavery. Contradictory? You bet. But such contradictions are familiar to children who are often given an example they find just does not work in the real world.
Granted, we don’t want our children to turn to violence to resolve all of their problems. Nor do we want adults to ram their cars into another driver who just cut them off or our government to bomb Venezuela off the face of the earth because Hugo Chavez is an idiot. Regrettably, however, real world solutions sometime demand violent responses.
The school children that learn this, I imagine, grow up to be Conservatives. It does not mean they like violence- it does not mean they think it is the answer to every problem. It just means that they know that if they knock the bully down hard enough he won’t bother you again. The school children who do not learn this, I imagine, grow up to be Liberal. It does not mean they are stupid- it does not mean they are incapable of defending themselves. It just means that they hope that the bully will one day realize he’s a jerk and leave them alone. Everybody knows this student is in for a rough few years and a less pleasant educational experience than one might hope.
I recall specific instances in my youth where violence, or the threat of violence, ended my longsuffering tolerance of bullies. Indeed, a friendship even developed out of one such altercation. Most children, once they’ve had enough, stand up and defend themselves. Teacher involvement will not always, or even most times, solve the problem- students are young, not stupid. They know they can either intimidate their classmates into silence or use peer pressure to keep them down.
General William T. Sherman understood this. He once said that if he could make war so terrible that generations would pass before the defeated peoples would again make war to try and reach their goals.
Would that liberals understood this. But they don’t- that is why they are liberals.
December 5th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
The liberals are under the mistaken impression that everyone, even mass murderers, are good at heart and they just need to be nurtured to solve their problems.
Their idea is to get in power at the Whitehouse, surrender Iraq and have a communal yoga session led by Nancy Pelosi with the world powers to solve all of our problems. Imagine their surprise when after all that caring and compassion that we find ourselves still hated and under attack again.
It won’t surprise me because I know that they’re wrong - there are truly evil people in the world that just plain hate us and want to kill us for who we are!!! We simply cannot let the liberals take us down their version of the road to world peace, we’ll suffer the consequences for decades to come if we do….
December 6th, 2007 at 4:07 am
“It just means that they know that if they knock the bully down hard enough, he won’t bother you again.” True. But why knock down a bully who has never bothered you in the first place?
December 6th, 2007 at 9:49 am
I remember this kid in junior high who was picked on all the time- and especially so by this one jerk. One day, he fought back- and was getting his stuffing kicked out for his efforts. Another kid stepped in and cold cocked the guy who was pounding away at the poor kid. And I mean right across the face and knocked him down and bloodied his nose. Why did this other kid step in? He wasn’t a friend of the guy getting beat up. I look back know and realize that he was only, as Jesus commanded, being a neighbor because everybody is our neighbor. The right thing to do was stop what was going on.
The bully was never the same again- and though he still started trouble as we got older he eventually smoothed out. I never knew of him starting a fight again, though, that’s for sure. Yeah, this would not work in every situation- but in most it would. I think of Iraq and Saddam wasn’t only beating people up, he was murdering them, en mass. How much more important is it to stop such a nightmare?
I don’t agree with everything on rightnewsandviews but Jeff does peg this one dead on.