"Victims" Who Bully

If you watch this it looks more like wincing than smirking.

Some poor kid, as yet unidentified, (but don't worry the left will take care of that oversight soon), is in deep trouble. This unfortunate Catholic schoolboy went to a pro-life rally and stood in place while a "native American" approached from a nearby pro-left rally banged a drum in his face for two or three minutes and now he faces possible suspension, national shaming and who knows what other "punishments". He kept his hands behind him the entire time as the native American elder fronted they young man. The boy did not speak. He didn't behave aggressively. He simply refused to retreat as the "native American elder" swung a mallet and banged a drum just inches from his face. 

His biggest crime?  He wore a "Make America Great Again" hat while doing it. His second "crime" was he didn't frown, didn't back away and wore (gasp) a smirky teenaged kid smile. Better yet, Nathan Phillips, the Native America Vietnam Veteran and former director of the Native Youth Alliance who banged the drum in the Catholic schoolboy's face gave a nice interview in which he lamented the idea of a border wall; said that Native Americans had never needed a wall and shed one of those single tears like that fake Indian in the anti-littering TV commercial back in the 60s.

The poor boy was the perfect target. The only thing the gang of thugs who backed up Mr. Phillips were there to do was to egg things on. The fact that you can hear on the tape several of the boys saying, "I don't understand what's going on."  Obviously the kids didn't realize that they were being set up for a video taped incident.

As someone who worked for years with boys, I probably view this video from a rather different perspective from that of communist, lesbian, feminist, Democrat, journalist, social justice warriors. As such, I will likely draw some ire from that class of folk. Also, I have probably have ruined any chance I might have to serve on the Supreme court simply by writing this weblog.

The most troubling thing about things like this is the inexorable slide the culture is taking toward a kind of mob rule/tribalism it represents. Such a culture, such a government tends to use bullying, lies, intimidation, shaming and punishment to enforce it's collective will on anyone who is not a member of the perceived majority. It is antithetical to the American way of life as it has been preserved for more than a quarter of a millennium. The US Constitution was brilliantly designed to push us to be better than we were then and in the future to be better than we are now.  It forced an end to slavery, the emancipation of women and acceptance of the minority populations who came to join us and the embracing of our differences.

We are going backwards. Political correctness, media control, public shaming and the slide toward collectivism takes us back to a medieval feudal style culture with an elite ruling class and a homogeneous proletariat who all think alike, act the same way and dare not believe differently from the herd.

Almost time to go home.

© 2019 by Tom King

Playground Bully for President - 2016

The more I read comments by Trump supporters (especially self-identified "Evangelical" Christians and conservatives) explaining their support of the man, the more I'm convinced it's time to move away from the cities into rural hideaways and start building the old end-of-the-world bunker.  

And I'm not really kidding here.

People who should know better are flocking to get behind a candidate who is essentially a playground bully, hoping he will do for them what they lack the will or access to power to do for themselves. It's sad to watch people who claim to support the Constitution and the Bill of Rights hand the reins of power to a man whose business "experience" is a sickening record of strong-arming competitors, bullying partners and stiffing those who trusted him. Trump has historically been long on hubris and confident promises and short on delivering on those promises (save the promise he made to himself to make himself richer).

I'm sorry, but however much you think Trump will protect us from the ravening hordes of Muslims and Mexicans, that "protection" will come at a price. If you seek safety and protection from a casino and strip club owning shady real estate developer who is up on racketeering charges and has ties to the Mob, you are no better than those who seek peace and safety from a mythical altruistic socialist elite who promise to give you free stuff. Don't forget how it works in the real world for those who pay for safety and protection from powerful thugs.  

First you pay for protection from outside enemies and then you pay for protection from your "protector". As in medieval times when armored feudal barons "protected" groups of serfs and peasants, those who are strong enough to protect you are also strong enough to enslave you. Like Trump, the ancient nobles were "beholden to no one". If that's what you like about Trump, that he's so rich he is beholding to no one, then you should not be at all surprised when, once he is in power, he isn't beholden to you either.

Attack dogs may give a few burglars pause, but if they have no reason to obey you, they make very poor masters. It's like Ronald Reagan and Winston Churchill both said. Depending on appeasing a bully or waiting for someone else to make things go right for you is like feeding the crocodile hoping it will eat you last. 

That doesn't always work so well.

Just sayin'.

Tom King © 2016

Why I'll Never Support the Ron Paul Conspiracy Theory-Based Foreign Policy

So quit sending me those danged Youtube links!

One of my Paulestinian buddies asked me, "What's wrong if some Russians living in Ukraine want to be Russian again?

Answer: Nothing. Let them move back to Russia.

Ukraine separated from Soviet Russia by popular vote. The Russians living there moved in under Soviet Communism. Saying the Russian separatists have a right to take Ukrainian land just because they moved there and transfer it back to the motherland is like saying the millions of illegal aliens in the US have the right to take parts of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California and hook it back up to Mexico. Or maybe the Italians could take part of Brooklyn and give it to Italy. There are enough Irish in Boston to make the town Ireland's western-most county. The idea that immigrants can move into an established country and then just peel off part of a country for themselves is just stupidity. And before you shout "What about Israel?" that was a special UN sanctioned case done for a refugee population that had been displaced by war and in real danger. Russian separatists aren't in any real danger from the Ukrainian government.

My buddy went on to state categorically that we should not do anything to irritate the Russians, like stand up to them. "Nothing," he says, "Is worth the risk of nuclear war, even a limited one."

I've got to ask. What are you, Paulistas anyway? French? Do you have any idea what that would mean as a foreign policy simply to let every third rate would-be dictator with an army to run wild?

It means the same thing it does in a junior high classroom where the teacher is weak. The bully that is willing to be the craziest, most violent, most cynical and evil rules unless someone is willing to get beaten up to stand against him. Back in my junior high, we had one particularly aggressive 8th grader who enjoyed tormenting younger, smaller kids. He once punched me in the face for objecting to his taking a basketball away from a group of smaller kids. I told him to his face he had done wrong and I may have used less than diplomatic language. He cold cocked me.

I stood there and took it and even turned the other cheek, but I did not lose eye contact. When Mr. Pauly, the school principle came out and saw my bloodied face, he asked who had done it, I didn't rat my tormentor out. I said I'd been hit by a basketball and went in to clean myself up. Mr. Pauly let it go, but he knew better. The boy left me alone after that, but I had had to take the risk of being punched in the face to make him stop. Even though I wasn't big enough to survive a fight with him, his own over-reaction to being confronted nose-to-nose and the consequences he endured as a result in terms of general disapproval from the rest of the class and a few words from Mr. Pauly encouraged him to greater self-control in the future. It didn't last. He wound up shooting up a bar, killing some folk and ending his short life in Angola prison's Old Sparky. Those in attendance said he wore a look of surprise on his face as they strapped him in.

My Uncle Art taught 8th grade for years and one year he had this huge gentle boy name Harold in eighth grade. Harold was big and muscular, but he wouldn't willingly harm a fly. He was a friend to all the underdogs in the class. One day one of the school toughs started to torment a younger kid who was a friend of Harold's. Harold approached and instructed the young thug to let the kid go.

 "What are YOU going to do about it?" the bully sneered. He woke up flat on his back with a very bloody nose and the entire schoolyard cheering for Harold. Uncle Art had a strict rule about fighting, but he knew what had happened. He told Harold he'd have to be punished. Harold said, "I understand, Mr. Bell." Uncle Art couldn't bear to give him swats for rescuing a younger child from a bully, but his law about fighting was written in stone. He tried to make it easier on the boy and gave Harold the option of serving detention instead of taking swats. Harold said, "No, Mr. Bell. I knew I'd get swats for it. I'll just go ahead and have those now and get it over with."


Uncle Art didn't go easy and the kids in the schoolyard heard three loud pops clear out in the schoolyard. When Harold walked out standing straight, his jaw firm and steady, he became a legend. Word got round among the bullies that Harold would punch you in the face and take swats for it if you messed with any of the little kids. Uncle Art said bullying disappeared from the school almost overnight.

And that's why I have the attitude I do with regard to isolationism - that and I do read history. I'm never going to change my attitude about it. I'm tired of being called stupid by dim-witted ideologues. I was invited to become a member of MENSA for crying out loud and I do qualify. I have the intellectual chops to figure out what's so and what ain't. I will never support the idea that the United States of America, the only decent country on the planet that anyone can even halfway trust and the only power left that could actually stand up to any sort of geo-political threat, should sit back and let the worlds bully boys have their way. Ain't gonna happen. You Paul-bots are wasting your delusional emails on me. All this conspiracy claptrap and twisted ideology is unconvincing and has yet to survive even half-hearted scrutiny on my part.

What I'm concerned about is that the loony left and the loony right are now the craziest people in the room. My fear is that if we don't some of us stand up to them, they're going to rule and that's when the world will sink back into semi-feudal barbarism.

I would like to thank my Paul-bot buddies for the blog post material, though. You guys stop by often and remind me how stupid I am. I get advertising dollars every time you do.


© 2014 byTom King

Arguing with Bullies: The Phobia Gambit

I love all the people out there who get their pantaloons in a twist because conservatives and Christians don't believe homosexual behavior is a good thing. They inevitably issue an angry denouncement proclaiming us "homophobic" as though we are somehow "afraid" of gay people.  I've seen a recent call for a boycott of Orson Scott Card's books and the new movie "Ender's Game" because Scott is Mormon and believes homosexual behavior is a sin. They call Card homophobic, a bigot and loser.

That makes no sense. 

If people like Card and me were "afraid" of gay people, we'd all pretend we thought gay marriage and gay sex were okey-dokey with us so that the scary gay people wouldn't hurt us and would stop calling us hurtful names that might make people not like us anymore. 

What a load of piffle!

Look I don't like alcohol addiction either but it doesn't make me alcoholicphobic or addictphobiic. I think adultery is wrong, but I'm not adultererphobic or for that matter sinnerphobic, a term I could use to apply to the fear of any person whose behavior violates my personal moral code.  The use of "phobic" applied to a person who disagrees with you on some moral point is nothing more than playground taunting, "You're just afraid; that's why you won't do it!" I can't tell you how many times I heard that used by 7th grade bullies to try and force some frightened kid to submit to their will or to do something he didn't want to do. 

Sadly for the LGBT advocacy community, many of us have grown up since 7th grade and we don't respond well to bullying. Their favorite tactic is useless against anyone who has actually bothered to grow up.  I seriously doubt Orson Scott Card is worried about the gay community boycotting his books. They don't read them anyway. Scott is making a good living writing for the huge untapped conservative audience for sci-fi/fantasy novels out there. They buys up his books in hardcover every time a new Ender novel comes out.  I've got the whole set myself.  The Commandant of the Marines made "Ender's Game" required reading for officer candidates. 

I don't own a single volume by Virginia Woolf, Oscar Wilde or Gore Vidal, not because they are gay authors, but because I don't like their stuff. I'm not boycotting them, nor calling for a boycott of gay authors.  I'll not be making any "boycott these gay authors" list. I just don't have any interest in buying books based on someone's sexual orientation. If I don't like their stuff I pass it by.  If I do, I read it.  I hear that Vidal's "Lincoln", for instance, is quite good and it may get a read before I'm done.  His historical perspective on Lincoln is, I hear, really well crafted and unique in the Lincoln literature. 

The difference I have with they hystrionic homophobe-bashers is that I don't care what books you own or do not own.  I don't call my LGBT friends heterophobic or Christian-phobic or Conservative-phobic if they disagree with me. As a way to force people to accept your point of view, I find the "you're afraid of us" argument less than effective with people who are at all worth convincing - grownups for instance.

Convincing the herd beasts is easy. Make them feel left out of the group and they totter into line as directed by the current societal bully boys.  People with real character and independence of thought recognize the bully argument for what it is and ignore it.  Those folk have left 7th grade far behind them. We are no longer afraid of them - not phobic if you will.

There's nothing sadder or more pathetic than a 40 year-old bully still trying to bend people to his will - or to hers for that matter.


© by Tom King

Shooting Ourselves..............Why we're losing the ideological war.

Conservatism is the antithesis of the kind of ideological fanaticism that has brought so much horror and destruction to the world. The common sense and common decency of ordinary men and women, working out their own lives in their own way-this is the heart of American conservatism today. Conservative wisdom and principles are derived from a willingness to learn --not just from what is going on now, but from what has happened before. Ideologues fit the world to their minds; conservatives fit their minds to the world. Ideologues believe politics is only a part of life. Ideologues believe they possess an abstract, absolute truth that can compel an imperfect humanity to attain a terrestrial paradise; conservatives believe in self-- evident truths and traditional rights and duties.                                                                                                      - Rep. Thad Cotter

Conservatism's greatest enemy at this time is lodged firmly within our ranks. Today's conservatism has degenerated to a guerrilla campaign, increasingly dominated by ideological hard-liners who responds to any attack from the left by shooting a handful of our own guys first before firing back in any meaningful way.  The person next to you is always easier to hit and these guys seem to be more about shooting someone than winning the war, no matter if it's someone on their own side that they shoot.  If these guys detect any hint of ideological impurity, they're going to open fire on you.  No one is safe; not Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio or even Ronald Reagan. The holier-than-thou right is, as far as I'm concerned, like having Al-Qaeda in our ranks. I rather wish they would form a third party. It might save the country yet.

We want to remember in our zeal for defending our liberties, that we NOT lose sight of who our enemies are. It's always much easier to shoot your own side first. Our friends and fellow travelers are focused on the obvious enemy to our rights and liberties.  We always are surprised by the bullet that comes from behind.  These self-proclaimed pure conservatives have a lamentable tendency to aim at the closest target when seeking blame for why they are losing the war. That's why liberals are steadily overwhelming us. They defend their own. The holier-than-thou conservative attacks his own - FIRST!. 

Which kind of army would YOU rather be in if it came to war? The conservative side has collected an element with every bit as rock hard an ideology as radical leftists. They even share many beliefs with the leftist militants like drug legalization and political isolationism. They're ready to create a modern day "Trail of Tears" in order to meet the letter of the law on immigration - marching 15 million illegal immigrants, men, women and children back across the border into poverty, drug wars and bloodshed. Many Americans would have a hard time with that on humanitarian grounds.  If we set aside our humanity, our willingness to listen to a different side of the story other than the one we think we hear at our first knee-jerk reaction, then we set aside the best principles of conservatism that Thad Cotter is talking about. I'm here to tell you that it isn't always as black and white as we suppose.  The principles of Reagan conservatism - the kind that the American people embrace - call for us to look at how things are and not how we think they ought to be.  

We've been treated to a century of progressive socialists, in the name of ideological purity, trying experiment after experiment in Marxism and failing miserably time after time. We do not need the spectacle of the radical right trying to force it's square peg ideology into a world that doesn't work that way either.

I watch us carry on bloody debates among ourselves and I can see exactly why we are losing elections despite the fact that our cause is just. We claim to hate the Islamist culture where strong men bully their way to lead a divided and bullied rabble that is constantly divided and fighting among themselves for preeminence, but when it comes right down to it, too many who wear the conservative mantle spend most of their time trying to bully their way to the top among our conservative brethren.

It's little wonder we get compared to Facism. It's not a fair comparison in general, but the special brand of heartless, iron-willed, nobody's-opinion-but-mine conservatism does bear a striking resemblance to Nazi and Islamic ideology as it turns out to be in actual practice. It's hard tor Golden Rule conservatives to get behind that sort of thing.

I recently suggested caution after a story came out about the school district in Texas that pulled the plug on a student who deviated from his graduation speech.  All I did was suggest that we might not want to tear into the Joshua School district based on hysterical stories in a conservative blog. I know that school district and they are not intolerant of religious speech.  Quite the contrary.  But by piling on them, we may make it impossible for them to allow any leeway at all in the future.  School districts have a tough enough time allowing freedom of religious expression without someone making a huge issue of it and attracting lawyers.  I'm pretty sure the only thing that will come out of this young man's "attempt to exercise his right of free speech" is that lawyers will force the district to ban all public expressions of religion including prayer at ball games and saying "under God" when pledging allegiance to the flag. 

Sometimes I think we are our own worst enemies.  We certainly know how to demoralize our own supporters.  I think the same one who is behind the progressive socialist movement is also supporting the radical right's remorseless and demoralizing attacks upon its own side.

This has been described as the "devil did it" theory of human history. I don't find that at all funny, nor will I be bullied into believing it's not true. 

You know, I really dislike bullies!

Tom King (c) 2013 

Bullies and Cliques and Progressives.....Oh, My!

All someone has to do to get the leftists on Facebook going is to mention "Glenn Beck" and they go all conspiracy theorist and start spitting on their keyboards as they type. One guy today described Beck as a charismatic cult leader and said that those who listen to him are .  He doesn't know what he's talking about.

Glenn Beck is about as charismatic as the Pillsbury Doughboy. He makes a good argument. I listen to him sometimes. I admit it. I also listened to Ed and Keith and read the Huffington Post on occasion. When I do the background reading, though, I have to tell you. Beck has a point. Sometimes his speculation gets a little deep, but one thing he always does is give you the references and tell you to check it out yourself.

I do information research for a living and I'm here to tell you, "It's not what Glenn Beck says that frightens the bejeebers out of me." It's what Barak Obama says and has said in the past. It's what liberal leaders and presidential confidents like Dr. Piven, George Soros, Saul Alinsky, Cass Sunstein, the Stern brothers, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the rest of the crew say. It's not Glenn Beck's interpretation that gives me the willies, it's their own words that give me pause. They've been telling us what they plan to do to this country for years. We just don't want to believe it.


When I listen to liberal pundits, read liberal think tank reports and peruse the pages of the Huffington Post and Daily Kos, I see a movement afoot to fundamentally change the character of our government. That movement states very clearly that we need more government bureaucracy, more government power and a curb on free speech, assembly, religion and the right to keep and bear arms. They want to create a no-risk nanny state with an economy that is centrally planned by the federal government.

There is an arrogance in the very tone of their words that says, "I'm smarter than you so shut up. I'll tell you what you need to think." I'm getting none of that from Glenn Beck. I get that from people on the left.

When I was growing up I found myself at odds with two groups of kids in school - the bullies and the cliques. As near as I can tell they all grew up to be progressive socialists.
 
One of them said, "Even Chris Matthews thinks Beck is nutty." 
 
She said that Matthews accuses Beck of distorting history.  Wow! She really believes Matthews is an unbiased reporter. Incredible!  Chris Matthews is hardly one I'd suspect of spending a lot of time studying dusty old history. I'm telling you I've looked this stuff up. I've read it. I've seen the film of people like George Bernard Shaw, the darling of progressives to this day talking about how he thought we ought to have a local board that every 5 years we all had to appear before to justify whether we had contributed enough to the community to be allowed to continue living.  The man was dead serious.


I read the entire three volume set of HG Wells' History of the World. I have it in my library. It turned me off Wells as a writer. The books make the case that certain races and cultures and individuals are superior to others. The man was the worst sort of racial supremist and he was one of the fathers of the Progressive movement.

That's horrific, but my liberal friends quote Shaw constantly as though he was a really smart guy with all the answers. Talk about not knowing history. Glenn's turning up uncomfortable stuff under history's rocks and openly leftist people like Matthews can't disprove it, so they go after the messenger.  It's a textbook leftist tactic. It's almost cliche'.

Like I said, it's not Glenn Beck that scares me. My friend pointed out that there are thug Republicans too. They really don't get it at all.  I don't like progressive Republicans either. They compromise their principles for power and they aren't any better than those that are trying to make us a socialist nation. When they all get done, we'll be a third rate world power and they will be the new nobility.

And let me make sure I am clear. I'm not afraid of people like my liberal friends. They really believe this hopety change stuff will make us all better and that those who are resisting the holy "change" are somehow bad people. But I really don't worry about them. It's the guys in the legislatures and congress and White House that are working like bees in a tar bucket to make it happen before we can do anything about it that worry me in the night.

The sad thing is that one day we're likely to wake up in a country we don't recognize. Tragically, it's always the odd folk, the ones that flock to the progressive banner thinking the new government will protect them, that get lined up against the wall first when the revolution ends. Check your history. It's whatever religion that's out of favor, it's homosexuals, the disabled, old people, people who disagree, people the new regime considers "immoral" Look at German socialism and Russian Communism. They murdered Jews (the out of favor religion), the weaklings, those who disagreed politically went to the Gulags. They "eliminated" the elderly, disabled and infirm. They sent the decadent and the mentally ill to re-education camps and "hospitals" where they were experimented on and finally euthanized. They made soldiers and jailers out of children.  And every bit of it was done in the name of the greater good.

I hear the same rhetoric that preceded all the most heinous socialist regimes being repeated on television and radio, on news and in the papers by progressives - the same vague promises. They use marginalized and unhappy people as foot soldiers to seize power, then such regimes inevitably turn on them once they have control and no longer need them..

When the president (I heard him say it myself) says we need a special civilian law enforcement agency with all the power and equipment of the military, it frightens me. I can't help think Gestapo and KGB. Unlike many of my friends on the left, I don't trust Barak Obama any farther than I could toss him. He has given me little reason to do so.

So, unless the left succeeds in removing our right to speak, people like Beck, Limbaugh and me are going to say our peace. When they do remove our right to speak in the name of "tolerance" or "public safety", the progressive movement will stand revealed for what it is.

I could no more remain silent than I could the day on the playground in 1967 when I told a crowd of bullies to leave the little ones they were tormenting alone. Oh, I stood my ground alright. Lost a good deal of blood in the process!

I really dislike being so stubborn, but it's a lifelong habit that continues to cost me blood and a comfortable place at the table with the cool kids.

Tom

The Problem Is, Isolationists Don't Understand Bullies!

 I watched an interview with President Bush last night.  He was unapologetic for taking us into Afghanistan and Iraq.  God bless him.  He took the responsibility for the decision, a rare thing for a politician to do.  Lately he's been taking the responsibility for all President Obama's screwups too.  I admire him for his patience in not speaking out in his own defense.  GW is a class act. He understands the proper balance between the Golden Rule and a leader's charge to protect his people from thugs and bullies.

I was reminded of his policy of preemptive military action, when a reader of my last weblog took me to task for defending the principle on which Bush based his military action.  I've written extensively about how the "fortress defense" as proposed by both Liberals and Libertarians, is absolutely wrong and won't get us anything but overrun in the end.  I believe you have to go after your enemies when they go after you.  You don't respond to military style attacks (machine guns, bombs, missiles and projectile aircraft) by sending police to arrest people.  It's stupid and doesn't work.

My friend responded saying, "Probably would not be a good idea to try that tactic on the playground..... "striking your potential enemies". Good way to start a problem.... and would def. not solve the problem. I think the counsel given in the NT might be better."

That all sounds reasonable on the face of it, but I can tell you from hard experience, the playground analogy doesn't work.  In fact, it proves my very point.  

On every peaceful playground there is one superpower - the teacher. To keep peace on the playground the teacher intervenes right now or else bullies and thugs reign supreme and the little ones are persecuted unmercifully.  When I was a teacher, I had a peaceful playground because I practiced President Bush's doctrine of strategic response.  I watched the kids closely and I picked off the bullies before they could get started. Having been on the receiving end of bullying, I recognized it when I saw it happening and took immediate preemptive action.  At the first indication that one of my young hoodlums was going to torment a smaller kid, I caught 'em up by the scruff of the neck and set them down the playground wall.  They soon learned to play nice or they wouldn't be allowed to play at all.

I grew up in a school with an unsupervised playground. The teachers often stayed inside to grade papers for the first 15 to 20 minutes of recess.  It made for a miserable time of it for the smaller kids.  I didn't bother anybody (according to my friend's and the New Testament's suggestions).  I was skinny and small and made good grades.  I might as well have worn a target on my chest.  The local bully boys tormented me until I finally either got tired or (in one case) bloodied a nose.  I finally decided I didn't mind getting beat up for standing up to them  If I stood up to them, my beating usually was spectacular enough to draw the attention of a teacher and they'd get in trouble and have to miss a few recesses which made for a few days of precious peace.  Since it discouraged them from messing with me, I figured being on the receiving end of a little pain was worth it.  I went home bruised and bloodied many a day, but the local thugs finally got tired of getting a few bruises of their own and winding up in detention for their trouble.  The teachers knew I was a peaceful kid and was being bullied, so I never got in trouble for defending myself.  The bullying kept up till eighth grade, after which, they finally left me alone for the most part.  That was partially because I grew big enough that they thought I might have become a threat to their own noses.  

Ironically, the reader who made the playground analogy, actually went to my elementary and high school and knew the bullies I was talking about. Somehow, though, he missed the lesson I learned all too well.  Bullies do not forgo bullying just because you leave them alone or try to be nice to them. They are predators and only understand a rapid and forceful response - usually by whoever is the local superpower.

There was one guy in particular that one afternoon took a basketball away from a bunch of the smaller guys that were playing at the other end of the basketball court.  Without the ball, we couldn't play any more.  He did it for no other reason than to spoil our fun. Mr. Pauly, our PE coach and principal hadn't come out onto the court for PE yet, so we were unsupervised and at the mercy of the school bullies.

I had got tired of their thuggery and went after the ball. My nemesis snatched it back.  I got nose to nose with the guy and explained rather heatedly that he had no right to take our basketball from us. I told him exactly what I thought of him.

He hit me square in the face with a hard right.  I put my hand to my face. It came away with a considerable amount of fresh blood.  I glared at him eye to eye, then turned and walked away just as Mr. Pauly came out of the building.  He saw my face and asked why I was bleeding.  I mumbled something about a basketball and went inside to clean up.

For some reason this particular guy didn't bother me much any more after I stood up to him and took a punch in the face.  I think he was ashamed of himself for attacking me.  He was also scared of the consequences if I told the principal who had hit me.

Like Pres. Obama suggested the U.S. ought to do, I "absorbed the attack".  It probably protected the younger and smaller kids from bullying at least for that day.  After he hit me, he threw the ball back to the others and Mr. Pauly watched them like a hawk.  The principal knew what had happened even without proof and all the playground thugs knew what would happened if they gave him any excuse to punish one of them.

You see I had this guy's fate in my hands.  If I'd told Mr. Pauly, he'd have been in far more trouble than he wanted to be.  He was already in trouble most of the time anyway.

Mr. Pauly, as principal of the school, was the superpower you see.  This young man knew the principal would take action if there was any more nonsense - severe and stern action that would make this boy very uncomfortable indeed.  They still used paddles in those days and Mr. P had a powerful arm.

Roosevelt had it right.  "Speak softly and carry a big stick!"  If the local bully boys know you'll use that stick, it makes for a much more peaceful world for you and everyone about you.

People who don't understand that may simply have had such really good teachers that the bullies were kept in line.  They might have been too young to understand why their world's were so peaceful and sheltered when they were children, so they take it for granted that being peaceful insures others will be peaceful to you.

Either that OR they were running with the bullies themselves and still, as grown adults, don't recognize the harm and misery they inflicted on their classmates with their thuggery.

I am a devout practitioner of the Golden Rule.  I have often "absorbed attacks" rather than retaliating because it was the right thing to do.  I get that whole New Testament advice and apply it on a personal level.

However, the role of a government, a teacher or other type of leadership is to protect its charges from those who would, without just cause, attack them.  God, Himself, called upon kings and rulers to defend his people.  That's what soldiers do and it is an honorable profession if you take up the sword reluctantly and only to defend those weaker than yourself. It's not a bad job for those who are strong and tempted to be bullies themselves - a way to exorcise those demons by protecting rather than attacking.

Or as King Arthur said, "Not 'Might is right,'  but 'Might FOR right!".

That's my opinion whether you like it or not.

Tom King - Tyler, TX