A girl outside the coffee shop asked me, “Would you like to sign our petition to help stop bullying of gays in our schools?”
I can find at least four things wrong with that question.
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Out of Sleep 
I don’t think you’re trying hard enough.
Ha! Touché.
lol! I have to know, how did you respond to her?
As for myself, I don’t know how I would respond to that question, I would not sign it of course, but I don’t know what I’d tell her. I also can only imagine her reaction if I did tell her straight up “no”! Would a fight ensue? Name calling? I guess it depends on the person I’d be dealing with.
I was caught off guard and just demurred with what I hoped was a laughing “Er… no.” She immediately — IMMEDIATELY — responded with a chipper “Have a great day!” which showed to me that she had been coached not to bother anyone who bristled at her sales pitch. That way they can always take the moral high ground in their own eyes. “Hey, we are doing good work, but if some people are too bigoted to understand, we are not about to force it upon them! It’s a free country!” Whereas, actually and of course, the whole point of such a petition is precisely to outlaw the opinions of those they disagree with.
In my neighborhood — so dark blue it’s like the midnight sky with no moon — I encounter pro-marijuana (which I consider inoffensive though I don’t support it) and pro-abortion (which I abhor) and pro-gay petitioners all the time. I can spot them two blocks away.
If I had gathered the wherewithal and the gumption, I might have attempted some kind of Socratic dialogue with her starting with the question of what benefits she perceived as emanating from her petition… that is, what *specific* good she expected to come from it, and always pushing past her pieties about poor little bullied queer kids to get at the heart of her philosophy. Obviously it’s extremely unlikely that such a foray would result in some kind of total enlightenment on the issue, but one can at least plant seeds.
(Also, Socrates always struck me as something of a dick.)
She seemed like a sweet enough person, just thoroughly, thoroughly indoctrinated.
(Also, Socrates always struck me as something of a dick.)
LOL, agreed.
“Golly, yes, bullying IS terrible, but it is wrong to single out any one group as being the only ones deserving of protection. Don’t you think that all school students deserve the same protection as ‘gays’?”
Ha, indeed. But the thing is, I’m sure this young lady would agree. We *do* need to enforce comprehensive anti-bullying laws in all sectors of society.
Cf. the “Men’s Movement” and attempted prosecutions of anti-white criminals under “hate crime” laws. You’re just playing by their rules at that point. Squabbling, petty, and missing the forest for the trees.
(To be clear, I am not *against* the use of existing formal structures (racism laws, sexism laws etc) to fight for one’s rightful dignity. But while one might — MIGHT — achieve legal rights through such a strategy, as a practical and perhaps sometimes necessary stopgap, one will never achieve dignity in such a manner.)
It was only recently that I realized that the massive coverage given to preventing bullying in school was *in fact* a stalking horse for giving special privileges to PC-approved groups (simply by selective application of the rules – just as with ‘hate crimes’).
This is really deep Antichrist stuff we are in nowadays – when that which is good is so thoroughly subverted.
And it is so cunningly disguised. I am supposedly wise to the wiles of PC, but it took me a long time to work out what was really going on, and why educational officials had suddenly become concerned about bullying. Presumably people who are less loathsomely reactionary than I will *never* find out what is really going on.
I call it an Antichrist phenomenon because the Antichrist is said to fool the faithful by a cunning simulation of Christianity – by a selective and biased application of the Good, which actually serves evil.
In fact, this is the usual way in which evil works when evil is successful. Unless the evil is disguised and mixed with good, it is not popular.
(This is why Tolkien said that the One Ring wielded by Gandalf or Galadriel would be worse than if wielded by Sauron – he was perfectly serious about that.)
But the end times are when there is almost-nothing *except* Antichrist and those who serve him; those who strive for Good have become rare, obscure, weak, persecuted, vilified.
Thank you for the comment.
It’s off the main thrust of your particular comment, but let me add the obvious here. She was “anti-anti-gay” in her conscious thinking. The things *assumed* were the rightness of petitions, the rightness of state education, and the rightness of stopping bullying. All of which I find stupid.
When I shrugged her off, presumably she thought I simply hadn’t been enlightened on the gay issue yet. Just a matter of time, to their thinking. And in a sense they are right: as long as no one opposes the basic assumptions of Leftism, then there is (duh!) no reason to oppose Leftist principles.
The “pro-gay” part of her platform is indeed a logical extension of her prior assumptions. She *is* being quite logical according to her mistaken rules. One must challenge the underlying assumptions. It’s hard to do in a conversation on the street. One can try, of course, and it’s not totally pointless. But something like “The Lord of the Rings” works far more good in people’s souls than arguing can, these days. Such are the times we live in. One can lament or one can act.
by the way, Bruce. The anti-bullying campaign is only even *possible* in the PC regime. Under a normal society, true bullying would be dealt with by peers, by headmasters, and by parents. AND, by the bully-ee (forgive me that coinage) learning how to fight back, whether by muscle or by wiles.
Is the “normal” solution perfect? No. Would severe bullying go on, even to the point that all feeling hearts would want to go out to the poor suffering kids who are on the short end of the stick? Of course.
But it will continue in the PC regime too! Only instead of stamping out the bullying truly, the new regime will just teach them to think of themselves as everlasting victims who must appeal to the state to fix their (in the end, not-so-serious) life problems.
Whether it’s “anti-anti-gay” or not, the anti-bullying campaigns are just one more attempt to move normal human relations under the umbrella of Big Sister.
I agree with your first paragraph. I just said that I would respond in a certain way to that silly girl so that I would not endanger myself, yet retain a bit of self-respect. That is not what I was truly thinking; I was thinking what was in your first para.
My father is retired from the DOJ where he was a civil rights lawyer who sued local school districts for a living. In his mind, they were always doing something horribly terribly wrong rather than simply having evolved ways for dealing with local problems. On some level he recognizes his role in destroying St. Louis, Atlanta, etc. He certainly knows they’ve been destroyed, and he does blame leftism to some degree, but really, like any good leftist, he blames the corruption of true leftist principles or even a lack of resources.
The other day he was called and asked if he’d like to come back as a contract attorney (he’s 69 and was a sections chief, but apparently there is a “hiring freeze” which doesn’t apply to contract attorneys). Now, the main PC group, he tells me, is “persons with disabilities”. He tells me about how there are cases of mentally retarded people riding on school busses together with people with different afflictions who would rape them while the buss driver would look the other way.
I have no real doubt that this (or something close to it) happened. Obviously, it shouldn’t happen. But why and when did it start. What was like for the mentally retarded before it was decided that they must be “educated”. Why did the bus driver look away and not report it? What was the bus driver afraid of. Why can’t this be handled by local authorities? What do you honestly think will come of (further) destroying local authority in another community?
You can’t even have this conversation. Each cog in the machine is simply trying to stop a gay kid from being beaten up or a retarded girl from being raped. How could this be serving Satan?
Very interesting story, Josh. I come from a tiny town where there was one retarded boy. This was late 50s, early 60s. He lived with his parents; didn’t go to school; nobody beat him up or gave him a hard time – his parents saw to that. I can imagine what it’s like packing 40 of these children/adults on a bus and taking them somewhere to be “educated”.
Blaming the “corruption of true leftist principles”. Ha ha ha! I hear this all the time about the Soviet Union: “That wasn’t the TRUE communism”. Er…yes it was.
I was once in a similar situation. I had a friend in town and I was showing him around this part of the state, which has a lot of left-leaning college towns where you can go gallery hopping and whatnot (though this actually happened in one of the less extreme ones). A fellow in a tie-dyed shirt with a petition clipboard asked “Hey, do you want to sign a petition for gay marriage?”
Thinking with some alacrity, if not necessarily clarity I hammed up my response:
“NO!”
“What? Why not?”
“BECAUSE I AM EVIL!”
I moved to small town Alberta as a child, and was bullied relentelessly for my intellect; I mention this, to illustrate how close this issue is to my heart. I know first-hand just how much pain can be caused by a cruel peer-group in our modern prison schools.
And I am utterly disgusted by the current ‘anti-bullyshing’ smoke job.
This is a perfect example of what I’m talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3LQPkqhSKQ They make the kid feel bad for fighting back against the little snot who was picking on him!
Much like the Right to Bear Arms, the system is more terrified of the victim who defends themself (for the benefit of all future victims, and – yes – even the bully, who learns of consequences before he becomes an adult criminal) than it is of the bully, the petty criminal, or the misery that results.
Bullies aren’t a flaw in the present system, they’re a feature – offering more social work positions, and therapy for the victims, employing useless people.
I may write a post on this later today.
Careful, Daniel. I had some veiled death threats for my own post that expressed something less-than-reactive-horror at the prospect of bullying gays.
Even if you can find a 1000 things wrong with the qeustion, it can still be good to sign the petition.
I’m not sure you understand, Anonymous. My problems weren’t with the grammar of the thing. My problems were with the substance. Therefore, no, it cannot still be a good thing to sign it.