Recently Mayor Cameron Hamilton of Porterville, California
stirred a bit of controversy with his suggestion that people pushing
anti-bullying measures need to “grow a pair,” and that victims of bullying
should simply stand up for themselves or for those who can’t. Naturally, this
incensed progressives in the media who believe government intervention is the
answer.
His comment came during a City Council meeting earlier this
month after Councilwoman Virginia Gurrola asked the Council to support a
student-led anti-bullying program. The program would establish off-campus safe
zones citywide for teens being bullied after school.
“I mean, I am against bullying,” an exasperated Hamilton said,
“but I am getting damn tired of it being used as a mantra for everything that
ills the world when all most people have to do is grow a pair and stick up for
them damn selves.” Gurrola retorted, “It is hard to stand up and maybe grow a
pair when you are maybe a 10-year-old little girl.”
Outrage quickly grew in the mainstream media, which
gleefully jumped on Hamilton’s phrase as being sexist and inappropriate advice for
children. He appeared on TV numerous times to clarify his remarks (meanwhile, no
one in the media accused Gurrola of sexism for suggesting that girls can’t
stand up for themselves).
Last week, for example, CNN invited Mayor Hamilton to
discuss his comments on CNN Special
Report, hosted by Don Lemon, with a panel featuring myself and legal
analysts Mark O’Mara and Mel Robbins. I was invited to appear remotely from
CNN’s Hollywood studio based on an article I wrote a few months ago entitled “We Are
Raising a Generation of Wimps.” That article wasn’t specifically about
bullying, but about our increasing zeal as a culture to create ultra-safe
environments for our children, a paranoia which doesn’t serve them well as
children or as the adults they will become.
Hamilton again tried to explain his position and was rudely
dismissed by Robbins, who told him he needed to “grow a few brain cells” and
realize that bullying must be solved by adults – specifically, educators rather
than parents: “How are we gonna teach kids how to respond to bullying except to
have communities inside of schools with a zero tolerance policy and that stick
up for kids that are getting bullied?” O’Mara agreed with Robbins and derided
Hamilton’s recommendation that kids physically defend themselves as
“Neanderthal.”
The mayor noted that zero tolerance policies don’t teach
kids to stand up against bullies: “They teach kids to stand down because they’re going to get in the same amount of
trouble as the kid that’s causing the problem.”
“If they hit somebody, yes, they should get in trouble,” interrupted Robbins, “’cause that’s not how
you deal with this situation. You may have dealt with things like that 20 years
ago, but that’s not appropriate in 2014.”
“I think that’s very naïve,” the mayor correctly retorted. Bullies
today are not kinder and gentler than those of 20 years ago. They are not more
responsive to reason or dialogue or authority. They are the same as they have
always been: cowards who respect only a dose of their own medicine. They target
the weak and the fearful precisely because that is their predatory nature. Fight
back and they disintegrate.
Even the CNN crew grasps this basic truism. After the
commercial break, host Lemon noted that “everyone in the studio, about seven
people, agreed that the best way to handle bullies was to fight back, to stick
up for yourself.” (After the show I chatted with a female crewmember at the CNN
Hollywood studio who also agreed.) He told of his own experience being bullied
as a child, and said his father taught him to deal with it by commanding Lemon
to fight back. That seemed to work for Lemon, as it does for pretty much
everyone. Anyone – myself included – who has ever decided to physically stand
up to bullies knows that that works
and very little else does.
In my contribution to the discussion, I agreed with the
mayor and asserted the necessity for kids to be emotionally, psychologically,
and physically prepared by adults to deal with bullies themselves, and that
preparation includes the use of defensive violence. But Mark O’Mara, like
Robbins, rejected this notion. “There are more appropriate ways to handle
violence.” Neither he nor Robbins mentioned what any of those appropriate
solutions are. Robbins simply insisted, in her closing remarks, that educators must
handle bullying, which she was quick to blame on parents: “Kids that bully are taught
how to bully, typically at home,” she asserted. So her stance was that parents
are part of the problem, therefore the schools must step in and protect our
children for us (or is it from us?).
That is the solution of progressives (who have elevated
political bullying to an art form): Let the state protect you. Don’t fight
back, don’t defend yourself, because all violence is equally bad. Their refusal
to acknowledge that self-defense is morally justifiable violence leads to such
ludicrous zero tolerance extremes as suspending
kids from school for pointing index fingers like gun barrels. The result is
that American children are molded into risk-averse, helpless pacifists that, not
coincidentally, can be easily controlled by the state. This will do nothing to
stop bullying; it will actually exacerbate it.
Councilwoman Gurrola’s plan, for example, to establish off-campus
“safe zones” for teens being bullied after school sends the message to bullies
that they have won, that instead of the perpetrators being confronted and put
in their place, their victims will simply retreat to a safe haven to huddle
together in fear. It sends the message that the territory beyond those
boundaries belongs to the bullies. It sends the message that we don’t have to
grow up because the state is our protective father figure. If you want to see
the real-world results of this kind of defeatist thinking, look to Europe,
where Islamic bullies expand their sharia zones unchallenged by impotent
authorities and largely unarmed citizens.
As the ancient Roman saying
goes, if you want peace, prepare for war. If you don’t want the bullies
–schoolyard punks, progressive radicals or government despots – to win, teach
your children to fight back.
(This article originally appeared here on FrontPage Mag, 5/30/14)
