Teaching students to give in to bullies

Faith Moore writes at PJ Media,

“The more you act like a lady, the more he’ll act like a gentleman.” This was one of the quotes on the wall of Gregory-Lincoln Education Center for the Performing and Visual Arts, an elementary and middle school in Houston, Texas. Though the quote had been displayed there for the past five years, it was removed last week after Twitter user Lisa H. Beckman, whose child does not go to the school, saw the quote, found it offensive, and posted a photo of it on Twitter. Her accompanying comment called the quote “sexist, mysogonistic [sic], and discriminatory!” The quote was removed from the wall within 10 hours of Beckman’s tweet.

...If the school is trying to teach values — which the inclusion of these wall quotes would imply that it is — perhaps they should have thought more clearly about what this blanket capitulation teaches their students. Hold a debate, have a discussion, ask the students to weigh in, but don’t give in to bullies. That is a lesson middle schoolers ought to learn.

Read more here.

The bullies of the Left

Ace of Spades comments today on the bullies of the Left. Here a just a few excerpts:

Bullying a bully isn't bullying -- it's just kicking a would-be bully in the ass for a while until he stops bullying.

The left has decided that it can't win the political war on the current battlefield, so it has made it its mission to shape the battlefield by taking over the main transmission stations of permissible public opinion and using the power of those corporations to propagandize and bully citizens into compliance.

That is the war. Some on the Not-So-SmartSet right may proudly pat themselves on the back for avoiding that war, denying the existence of that war, and even white knighting corporations actively fighting that war on behalf of the left -- but that is the actual war.

And, as to any conservative too polite to fight the actual war -- then what is the point of you, and whose side are you actually on?

Read more here.

"Capitulation to know-nothing name-callers"

Peter Wood writes at The Federalist about the violent protestors at Middlebury College who prevented Charles Murray from speaking.

...Some things go without saying, but should be said anyway. Middlebury is in trouble. It is not alone. Many colleges and universities are in similar trouble. They have lost the key to open intellectual debate. They can no longer distinguish between tolerating dissent that respects open discourse, and licensing mob action aimed at preventing the free exchange of ideas. They respond with timidity and cowardice at the first mention of racial sensitivities, and flee in panic from their public responsibility to free speech when leftist bullies unleash their projectile accusations.

Race in America is a fraught topic. But allowing the epithet “racist” to silence any and every view not currently in vogue with Black Lives Matter is cringing. What kind of progress can we make as a nation if our college presidents, entrusted with the integrity of higher education, respond to such demagoguery with abject submission? The same more or less applies to such epithets as “sexist” and “anti-gay,” as well as other imputations that anyone who disagrees with a progressive formulation of who is oppressing whom is therefore a bigot.

Murray doesn’t fit the jacket that the Middlebury protesters tried to hang on him. Anyone who has read his books knows that. Shame on President Patton and others in the Middlebury community who could have spoken up and didn’t. But shame on a hundred other college presidents—at least a hundred—who have similarly taken the easy path of capitulation to know-nothing name-callers over the last year or two.

College boards of trustees, are you listening? Why do you appoint people whose only talent is to appease bullies? Why do you sit back and let them do what President Patton just did? Do you think Middlebury just purchased “peace in our time”? I think Middlebury purchased a long lasting scar on its reputation. It will be known as a place more concerned about political posturing than education.

...But, again, Middlebury is only one of many colleges and universities caught in this situation. Higher education today recruits college presidents in part by ascertaining their willingness not to get in the way of whatever progressive causes are currently fashionable. We hire college presidents who are all-in on diversity, sustainability, world-citizenship, and so on. Boards of trustees, charged with making these decisions, generally recline into accepting the advice of “stakeholder” committees in which each ideological faction wields a veto. We then wind up with college presidents whose superpower is appeasement.

Read more here.

Clinton encourages her supporters to bully Trump supporters

Scott Adams writes,

Trump isn’t encouraging his supporters to bully Clinton supporters. But Clinton has painted Trump and his supporters as Nazi-like deplorables, and that creates moral cover for the bullying you see all over the country against Trump supporters. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to bully a Nazi, would it? That’s the dangerous situation Clinton has created.

...Huffington Post, Salon, Daily Kos and other liberal outlets “coincidentally” ran hit pieces on me on the same day. That’s a sign of media coordination with the Clinton campaign. (Or a big coincidence.)

Hordes of either paid or volunteer Twitter trolls descended on me with two specific types of attacks. The similarity of the attacks suggests central coordination. One attack involves insults about the Dilbert comic (an attack on my income) and the other is a coordinated attack to suggest I am literally insane or off my meds (to decrease my credibility).

You’re also supposed to think I’m crazy for seeing these “coincidences” as coordinated attacks. You’ll probably see this blog post retweeted as evidence of my further spiral into madness. The same happened when I noted that Twitter was shadowbanning me for talking about Trump. Shadowbanning is real, and well-documented in my case and others, but it sounds preposterous, so it is easy to frame me as crazy. Expect more of that.

Read more here.

"The worst thing a presidential candidate can do is turn Americans against each other. Clinton is doing that, intentionally."

Scott Adams on what binds together Clinton supporters:

I’ve been trying to figure out what common trait binds Clinton supporters together. As far as I can tell, the most unifying characteristic is a willingness to bully in all its forms.

If you have a Trump sign in your lawn, they will steal it.

If you have a Trump bumper sticker, they will deface your car.

if you speak of Trump at work you could get fired.

On social media, almost every message I get from a Clinton supporter is a bullying type of message. They insult. They try to shame. They label. And obviously they threaten my livelihood.

We know from Project Veritas that Clinton supporters tried to incite violence at Trump rallies. The media downplays it.

We also know Clinton’s side hired paid trolls to bully online. You don’t hear much about that.

Yesterday, by no coincidence, Huffington Post, Salon, and Daily Kos all published similar-sounding hit pieces on me, presumably to lower my influence. (That reason, plus jealousy, are the only reasons writers write about other writers.)

...eam Clinton has succeeded in perpetuating one of the greatest evils I have seen in my lifetime. Her side has branded Trump supporters (40%+ of voters) as Nazis, sexists, homophobes, racists, and a few other fighting words. Their argument is built on confirmation bias and persuasion. But facts don’t matter because facts never matter in politics. What matters is that Clinton’s framing of Trump provides moral cover for any bullying behavior online or in person. No one can be a bad person for opposing Hitler, right?

Yes, yes, I realize Trump supporters say bad things about Clinton supporters too. I don’t defend the bad apples on either side. I’ll just point out that Trump’s message is about uniting all Americans under one flag. The Clinton message is that some Americans are good people and the other 40% are some form of deplorables, deserving of shame, vandalism, punishing taxation, and violence. She has literally turned Americans on each other. It is hard for me to imagine a worse thing for a presidential candidate to do.

I’ll say that again.

As far as I can tell, the worst thing a presidential candidate can do is turn Americans against each other. Clinton is doing that, intentionally.

Read more here.

What do you want to bet this was a substitute teacher?

Chicks on the Right posts this video taken on a student's cell phone. It shows students bullying a teacher.

The classic bully

Bret Stephens writes in the Wall Street Journal about Obama's upside-down worldview.

To adapt George Orwell’s motto for Oceania: Under Mr. Obama, friends are enemies, denial is wisdom, capitulation is victory.

The current victim of Mr. Obama’s moral inversions is the recently re-elected Israeli prime minister. Normally a sweeping democratic mandate reflects legitimacy, but not for Mr. Obama. Now we are treated to the astonishing spectacle in which Benjamin Netanyahu has become persona non grata for his comments doubting the current feasibility of a two-state solution. This, while his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas is in the 11th year of his four-year term, without a murmur of protest from the White House.

...For tiring of constant Palestinian bad faith — and noting the fact — Israel will now be treated to pariah-nation status by Mr. Obama.

...Here is my advice to the Israeli government, along with every other country being treated disdainfully by this crass administration: Repay contempt with contempt. Mr. Obama plays to classic bully type. He is abusive and surly only toward those he feels are either too weak, or too polite, to hit back.

The Israelis will need to chart their own path of resistance. On the Iranian nuclear deal, they may have to go rogue: Let’s hope their warnings have not been mere bluffs. Israel survived its first 19 years without meaningful U.S. patronage. For now, all it has to do is get through the next 22, admittedly long, months.

Read more here.

Bullies

Guest post
by
Suzann Darnall

This seems to be the way far too many people in the world think. That the rules do not apply to them. They simply go about doing as they wish. If a law, regulation, or societal convention is inconvenient . . . ignore it! This is the philosophy of most bullies.

This is a problem for the rest of the people in the world. Because others all too often fall victim to what happens after the bully goes ahead and does as he wishes.

Not that all bullies are male. Mean girls are bullies . . . we just generally use different terms for them. Just as there are many different terms to use for male bullies as well. But, for simplification I am going with bully and he. Besides, it is what fits best with my current train of thoughts. He is definitely front and center of what I am thinking right now! He is most definitely a bully!!!

Bullies usually offer justifications for their actions:

I did it because ___ (fill in the blank) ___.
It was ___ (fill in the blank) ___'s fault.
I wanted ___ (fill in the blank) ___.
I have a right to ___ (fill in the blank) ___.
___ (fill in the blank) ___ can't tell me what to do.

The excuses are as numerous as the bullies who proffer them. And, just as useless. I have no use for bullies. I think the world would be a much better place without them. I think bullies are dangerous. Much more dangerous than most people are truly aware. And, part of this is because far too many people are not really aware of what bullies are often doing.

While the kid saying mean things or hitting others on the playground is a bully, he is not nearly so dangerous as the girl who slowly and deliberately intimidates all other girls in her class into kowtowing to her as the queen bee. The mean kid will be seen as a bully by everyone and will be dealt with. The girl using lies and intimidation often glides under the radar because she is well-behaved, a good student, and seen as a leader. But, leadership is easy to obtain when using deceptive bullying tactics.

Hitler was a murderous dictator . . . and a bully. Dictators are one of the most atrocious kinds of bullies. Rapists are bullies. Many criminals are bullies. Most crime is a type of bullying. It is usually about "I want" and power. Two things that drive most bullies to do what they do.

Putin is most definitely a bully. What else would one expect from a former KGB officer? It was Soviet Survival 101 to become a bully. So, I am in no way surprised that he is employing land grab tactics and beginning Russian expansion all over again. It is what he knows. It is how he was raised!

But, what most people seemingly don't realize is that Obama is just as much a bully in his own way. He is just a weaker and less effective bully on the world stage. But, here at home, against those with less power, he is going at it hammer-n-tongs. He is trying very hard to beat the average American into submission with regulation, taxation, and intimidation.

People tend to forget that bullies can oft times be charming. They mostly think about the big ol' kid on the playground beating up smaller children for their lunch money. Hitler was apparently considered to be quite charming by those who knew him personally. Putin can be very charming when it is to his benefit. Obama has charmed an entire nation into electing his ineffective butt into the Oval Office twice. But, all the charm in the world does not make a bully anything less than a bully. It just makes them a charming bully.

A bully might be an elementary school student, a sorority girl, an abusive spouse, an online stalker, a politician, or a dictator. They might be male or female. They might be mean or charming. While they might not always be deadly, they will always be dangerous.

Oh, by the way, I think Hillary is a bully. She might be petite, blonde, and elderly, but I have no doubt she is as dangerous and vindictive as any bully to ever stand on the American or world stage. Possibly even deadly . . . if you consider Benghazi! But, hey, "What does it matter"???

© Suzann C. Darnall, MARCH 2014