The Real Bullies on the Playground

March 31, 2002

by Christopher G. Adamo

School children, from coast to coast, have faced severe abuse at the hands of bullies in recent years. The bullies in question here have little resemblance to the pugnacious and taunting youngsters of the past. Those bullies were mild and innocuous in comparison to the bullies of today. Worse yet, today’s bullies commit their aggression with total impunity from school authorities. As a matter of fact, they are the school authorities.

According to Webster’s Dictionary, a bully is defined as a "blustering, quarrelsome, overbearing person who habitually badgers and intimidates smaller or weaker people." In Michigan, an eight-year-old boy is being prosecuted for pointing a plastic gun at three children with whom he was playing. The principal of Lewis Elementary School in Fort Irwin, California, threatened expulsion of a nine-year-old boy for allegedly playing "cops and robbers" on the school playground. Such stories abound, and are increasing in frequency. Does the shoe fit?

What is not so widely understood is the underlying motive behind actions of this sort which, if they were not so sinister, would have to be regarded as ridiculous. Though it is tempting to focus on their absurdity, these events and the agenda they portend should be taken very seriously.

During the "60’s revolution," the leaders of the nation’s moral meltdown vehemently advocated a complete abandonment of traditional morality, and its code of absolutes which had so well served this nation, and Western civilization in general, for centuries. In its place, they pushed incessantly for the substitution of "tolerance" as the only absolute virtue. By "tolerance" they meant the acceptance of flexible and varying concepts of good and evil. No one person’s view of right or wrong could be imposed on another, for in so doing one would be judged guilty of intolerance - the only universal "wrong."

Sadly, much of society possessed neither the spine nor the moral clarity to remain steadfast, and thus conceded to the "new morality" in overwhelming numbers, allowing such pillars as marriage, family, honor, and civility to be redefined into virtual irrelevancy.

Of course, the social activists didn’t stop there, and indeed never had the slightest intention of stopping. They pressed relentlessly forward with their Orwellian set of substitute moral precepts, offered under the umbrella of "political correctness." Amazingly, it is this convoluted and perverse set of guidelines which is systematically being instilled in the minds of young people.

Consider the abject hypocrisy of the standard justification offered when a seven-year-old is threatened with expulsion for pointing his finger at a classmate and saying "bang!" The schools, it is explained, have a "zero tolerance" policy for violence. Not only are the liberal extremists, who make up the leadership of the public education monopoly, being allowed to universally define "violence" in ridiculous (except in their own minds) terms, they also have completely backtracked on the entire issue of "tolerance," just as long as it is they alone who can determine when tolerance is a good thing or an unacceptable evil. Who can doubt where the "zero tolerance" crowd would stand on the day one of the toy gun toting youths decides to hang up his plastic beretta and show up for class in a tutu?

A similarly grotesque set of contradictions exists in the area of "sexual harassment." While humiliating and terrorizing five- and six-year-old boys with charges of "sexual harassment" for attempting to hold hands with girls of the same age, the education establishment is virtually unanimous in its endorsement of condom distribution among teenage youth. Surely no one can have any illusions about the increased likelihood of true sexual harassment when teens are thus encouraged to behave promiscuously. But this sort of behavior among teens better serves the goals of the "politically correct" than the advocacy of sexual purity.

By design, the effects of such fabricated controversies always reach beyond the individual child in question. More ominous than even the trauma to an individual child of being expelled for pointing a paper gun at a classmate, or having the police show up at a student’s house to investigate a "shooting incident" involving a rubber band (both cases are real), consider the overall effect these incidents inflict on the remainder of the student population. Clearly, it is for their "benefit" that such actions are perpetrated in the first place. Despite the fact that those singled out for persecution by school administrators are exonerated in the overwhelming majority of cases, surely none of their peers desire to be put through any similar ordeal. The net result of this large scale program of intimidation is that other students will, in time, completely conform to the desired mindset. Guns are bad! Little boys are bad! A barnyard morality among teens and former Presidents? That’s a private matter.

While the administrative bullies may profess noble intentions, such as eliminating the risk of another Columbine incident, their real aim is to indoctrinate students with “politically correct” attitudes in general. It is altogether worthy to note that games involving imaginary and toy guns have been around for centuries prior to school shootings, but that the nation has only been afflicted with mindless bloodshed among school children since the advent of “political correctness.” And does anyone wonder from what “role models” students now learn to be bullies?

_________________________________________

Christopher G. Adamo is a freelance writer who lives in southeastern Wyoming with his wife and sons. He has been involved in grassroots political activity for many years. Chris was the editor of the Wyoming Christian from 1994 to 1996, and his columns can also been seen at CheyenneNetwork.com.

Send the author an E mail at Adamo@ConservativeTruth.org.

For more of Christopher's articles, visit his archives.