12-31-2019, 03:35 PM
As a substitute teacher I have enforced zero-tolerance policies on bullying... with relish. First, bullying is cruel, and cruelty is the purest and most reliable source of evil. Second, it is beyond any question a bad habit best broken as early as possible. There is no positive in bullying, and even for people who are deputized as enforcers it is easier to make a good police officer, prison guard, or soldier out of a good person than it is to make a good police officer, prison guard, or soldier out of a bully. Bullies can be effective, but in all the wrong ways.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.