Bully-ing

[babe]

What do you think I didn't comprehend?

So here is the post I made:

Ah, the dreamy musings of a serious social engineer. . . . .

Ostracizing a fundamental human choice, then another, and another. Just can't teach humans without these displays of hate, huh? Maybe sometimes you have to fight fire with fire, when you can't raise the level of discussion to an abstract ideal, oh, say like religions sometimes do.

Let's take the whole "Whites Only" sort of business that used to thrive on the commonplace ignorance and fear. A lot of businesses feared that whites would ostracize them if they did let the "different" folks in. Nobody had the courage to break with the establishment in place. So of course you had to have northern liberals and Republicans pass federal laws and send in the federal jackbooted troops. You couldn't win this one by discussing American ideals, right? If it was only the jackbooted cops/soldiers who could secure inviolate human rights, why did Martin Luther King gain impressive audiences?

The blacks did not have it as bad as another "minority" I can think of. The blacks were obviously valuable workers, with no way to escape, and sometimes they were kept alive. The indians were "savages" that just needed to be killed. Even Abraham Lincoln just thought they should all be killed. We raised armies to do that, and when they couldn't just finish the job, we gave them pitiful little reservations and posted soldiers nearby to make sure they couldn't roam out to hunt. Some of the plains indians were so troublesome we had to have US Grant and our Congress give out free guns and ammo, and free rides on trains across the plains with the express mandate to wipe out the buffalo herds.

This to people who had lived and traded with the trappers for decades.

Government force is always the preferred tool of progressives, right.

, with the line you responded to in bold. . . . . to which you asserted some naivete on my part.

I guess I could interpret this as an assertion that a lot of folks never would have opened their doors, or their school district doors, to blacks on the level of acknowledging that all people have inviolate, inate human rights and should be treated with respect and in the eyes of government operations, equality.

I think some people were dissatisfied seeing blacks being treated as second-class or worse, and with blatant disregared for common human rights, with the impudence of government backing up the ignorance it takes to do that.

I think a lot more folks would have been swayed with rhetoric and ideas, with substantial gains in relation to the mistreatment of blacks. I was in the context of my statement attempting to attribute a lot of that to Martin Luther King's speeches as being significant in their effect.

Gandhi in India had achieved something in his non-violent teachings and example which even caused the British government to consider it prudent to give India independence. I don't think that recognizing the strength and power of a truly great teacher is any kind of naivete.

 

[babe]

I realize that if I throw my weight into a direct disruption of some bully action, I am myself being something of a bully. I don't think school counselors, administrators or police are substantially any different in using their authority to impose some kind of disciplinary deterrent. Maybe a good teacher could hold forth, somehow keeping the kid interested, about human rights, and what respect and dignity is proper in dealing with others.

The girl who had her hair clipped was the victim of aggravated assault, in legal terms as it should be cast in a courtroom. Nobody has any right to do that to anyone else. But it was better for the people immediate to the situation to just handle it with some understanding. Not enough room in the jails for everyone who does something ignorant. Better to respond by teaching, whereever possible. A little shame isn't a bad thing to dish out to secure general decency in any community.

A full-blown campaign to ostracize others, with a huge raft of laws to specify exact words we may or may not use in every situation, or exactly what we may or may not do, would end up making government, and even a community, pretty distasteful. I've seen some instances where government officials use good sense in applying onerous laws, but too often it makes some officials think they must be brutes.

I generally consider it better to have fewer laws, and would prefer to have government authorities consider themselves to be public servants, not public masters. The most impressive thing about America, the USA, has been where and when we as a people and a nation managed to actually give some room for human rights and human liberty.

I think we don't deserve any great praise for the way we dealt with the American aborigines, and our dalliance in slavery was deplored from the founding of our country by many, who suffered it as the price for having some southern states which were needed to present a sufficient capacity to maintain our independence from the British, who attacked us in the War of 1812, and who deliberately sought to stir up war between the states on several issues, before they found a way to finance Lincoln's election with the supposed result that the South would secede, and Lincoln would let them. But Lincoln stood on principle, and fought to keep us a United nation.

 

[One Brow]

I think some people were dissatisfied seeing blacks being treated as second-class or worse, and with blatant disregared for common human rights, with the impudence of government backing up the ignorance it takes to do that.

I think a lot more folks would have been swayed with rhetoric and ideas, with substantial gains in relation to the mistreatment of blacks. I was in the context of my statement attempting to attribute a lot of that to Martin Luther King's speeches as being significant in their effect.

Gandhi in India had achieved something in his non-violent teachings and example which even caused the British government to consider it prudent to give India independence. I don't think that recognizing the strength and power of a truly great teacher is any kind of naivete.

The civil ritghts movement had many powerful speakers in the late 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century. The Indian independance movement also had its share of speakers in the early 20th century. You can't reason a person out of a position they did not choose on the basis of reason. You can't shame a person out of a position they think is morally correct.

Let's say the National Guard had not been sent in to protect the Little Rock Nine. Would they have been able to enter the school? Would they have been allowed to live? How many more years do you think it would have been before Arkansasans saw the light? How many more teenagers would have been forced into inequitable, segregated schooling? If you think it would be less t5han twenty years, less than tens of thousands of teenagers, you're kidding yourself and very naive. Are you really supporting the states using public monies for discriminatory education?