Beating up Bullies

Remember the movie "A Christmas Story?" The main character, "Ralphie," is a little neurotic, but otherwise normal, midwestern American kid growing up in the 40's.

"Scott Farkus," the "kid with the yellow eyes" is the school bully and he visits terror upon all the other kids. In one scene, he traps Ralphie and his friends on their way home from school, and it is the last straw for poor little Ralphie. He snaps and goes berserk on Farkus, beating him to a bloody pulp. As far as we can tell, Farkus never bothers Ralphie and his friends again.

When I was a young boy, there was a bully at my school too. He used to take some of the weaker kids lunch money and generally make their lives miserable. It always made me mad to see them getting beat up and I knew I could take him. I wasn't huge, but I was bigger than him.

So I beat him up. Beating up the bully was the right thing to do, because bullies only respond to their own language--violence.

I believe if you live in a neighborhood with a bully, and you have the capacity to do something about it, you have a moral obligation to. EVEN IF THE PEOPLE YOU ARE PROTECTING DON"T APPRECIATE IT! Just sitting back and saying to yourself "well, he never beats ME up, so I guess it's not my problem" is wimpy. That person has no courage.

For those who are confused about what America does in the world, it is simple. We beat up the bullies. Either you believe that it is a good thing to beat up bullies or you don't. If America doesn't beat them up, they will continue to take the other kids' lunch money and ruin everything.

The fact that we don't beat up ALL the bullies is irrelevant. Foreign policy is obviously more complicated than the school yard, so for instance, we don't pick a fight with North Korea because we are afraid of China. But we stop aggression when and where we can.