We are rightly concerned about bullying of nonconformists and kids who don’t sport the latest fashions in our schools. We are wrong if we believe that sensitivity training of students and faculty can cure the problem. We have elected bully presidents. Nixon had his enemies list and used government agencies to surveil them. Was there a bigger bully than Lyndon Johnson? Teddy Roosevelt? Bush with his pre-emptive war? All these men were probably convinced that they served a greater good and that their ends justified their means. So also those who launched “swift boat attacks” and assassinated the characters of Ellsberg, King, Cleland, et al.

Emerging nations need money to provide basic services. Having little taxable wealth they must impose import tariffs or nationalize their resources, both measures abhorrent to our free market ideology. Alternatively they can appeal for aid leaving the dependent. If they choose to go against our interests we cut off aid, finance counterrevolutions and disinformation campaigns, even abducting a democratically elected president in Haiti. Our behavior is that of an international bully making a myth of our championship of democracy. That myth exists to fool us. Nobody else believes it. We must own our behavior if we would change it.

If we are to end bullying in our schools we must reject bullying by our country, in our press and in our pulpits. We must reexamine our relationship to the golden goose that lays such rotten eggs. If we fail to do so we must abandon our claim to innocence having chosen to be blind.

John E. Gibson

Blooming Prairie