{"id":1840,"date":"2022-05-03T00:03:36","date_gmt":"2022-05-03T00:03:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/?p=1840"},"modified":"2022-05-03T00:03:36","modified_gmt":"2022-05-03T00:03:36","slug":"we-must-stop-the-bullies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/2022\/05\/03\/we-must-stop-the-bullies\/","title":{"rendered":"WE MUST STOP THE BULLIES"},"content":{"rendered":"
WE\u00a0 MUST\u00a0 STOP\u00a0 THE BULLIES<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n
Our duty in a civil society is to stop brutality.\u00a0 Our responsibility is to hold the powerful accountable.\u00a0 Our moral obligation is to protect the vulnerable.<\/h4>\n
<\/p>\n
Consider the pattern:<\/h4>\n
<\/p>\n
Putin invades Ukraine.\u00a0 Trump refuses to concede and promotes his Big Lie.\u00a0 Rightwing politicians in America and Europe fuel white Christian nationalism.\u00a0 Rightwing television pundits encourage racism and spur bigotry toward immigrants.\u00a0 Police kill innocent Black people with impunity.\u00a0 Powerful men sexually harass and abuse women.\u00a0 Politicians target LGBTQ youth.\u00a0 CEOs who are raking in record profits and pay workers meager wages and fire them for unionizing.\u00a0 The richest men in the world own the most influential media platforms.\u00a0 Billionaires make large campaign donations (bribes) so lawmakers won\u2019t raise their taxes.<\/h4>\n
<\/p>\n
All are abuses of power.\u00a0 All are occurring at a time when power is concentrated in fewer hands.<\/h4>\n
<\/p>\n
Throughout history, the central struggle of civilization has been against brutality.\u00a0 The state of nature is a continuous war in which only the fittest survive—where lives are \u201cnasty, brutish and short\u201d, in the words of English philosopher Thomas Hobbes.\u00a0 Without norms, rules and laws preventing the stronger from attacking or exploiting the weaker, none of us is safe.\u00a0 We all live in fear.\u00a0 Even the most powerful live in fear of being attacked or deposed.<\/h4>\n
<\/p>\n
Civilization is the opposite of this state of nature.\u00a0 A civil society doesn\u2019t allow the strong to brutalize the weak.\u00a0 Our job—-the responsibility of all who seek a decent society—is to move as far from a state of nature as possible.<\/h4>\n
Certain inequalities of power are expected, even in a civil society.\u00a0 Some people are bigger and stronger than others.\u00a0 Some are quicker of mind and body.\u00a0 Some have more forceful personalities.\u00a0 Some have fewer scruples.\u00a0 Some inequalities of income and wealth may be necessary to encourage hard work and inventiveness, from which everyone benefits.<\/h4>\n
<\/p>\n
But when inequalities become too wide, they invite abuses.\u00a0 Without laws and norms that protect the weaker, the stronger will abuse their positions of power.\u00a0 Such abuses invite further abuses, until society degenerates into a Hobbesian survival of the most powerful.\u00a0 People with great wealth or celebrity; people who occupy high positions in government, business, the media, or the church;\u00a0 people whose race, ethnicity, religion, or gender is dominant; people who command vast armies—such people may be tempted to use their power to demean, harm, or even annihilate weaker people.\u00a0 Unless they are stopped, an entire society—even the world—can descend into chaos.<\/h4>\n
<\/p>\n
Every time the stronger bully the weaker, the social fabric is tested.\u00a0 If bullying is not contained, the fabric unwinds.<\/h4>\n
Some posit a moral equivalence between those who seek social justice and those who want to protect individual liberty, between \u201cleft\u201d and \u201cright.\u201d\u00a0 But there is no moral equivalence between bullies and the bullied, between tyranny and democracy, between brutality and decency—no \u201cbalance\u201d between social justice and individual liberty.\u00a0 It is a false equivalence and a false choice.\u00a0 No individual can be free in a society devoid of justice.\u00a0 There can be no liberty where brutality reigns.\u00a0 The struggle for social justice is the most basic struggle of all because it defines how far a civilization has come from a Hobbesian survival of the most powerful.<\/h4>\n
<\/p>\n
Defending voting rights or LGBTQ rights or women\u2019s rights is not<\/em> the moral equivalent of attacking them.\u00a0 Coming to the assistance of refugee children is not<\/em> morally equivalent to putting them in cages.\u00a0 Prosecuting police who kill innocent Black people is not<\/em> one side of an equally respectable stance defending the freedom of police to kill innocent Black people.\u00a0 Fighting racism is not<\/em> of equal moral value to fueling racism.\u00a0 Seeking stronger safety nets for those in need is not<\/em> on an equal moral footing with seeking to unravel safety nets.\u00a0 Championing stronger unions is not<\/em> just the other side of pushing for weaker unions.\u00a0 Demanding higher taxes on billionaires \u00a0<\/em>is not<\/em> morally equivalent to demanding lower taxes on them.<\/h4>\n
<\/p>\n
We inhabit a society and a world growing more unequal, in which political and economic power is becoming ever more concentrated.\u00a0 To claim that \u201cboth sides\u201d — both the more powerful and the weaker — have the same moral standing is to avert one\u2019s eyes to this reality.\u00a0 Lobbyists for large corporations, publicists for the wealthy, lawmakers for the privileged, pundits for the powerful, celebrity peddlers of racism and xenophobia — none deserves equal space in the public square to those fighting against abuses of the powerful.\u00a0 The powerful already have the largest megaphones and deepest pockets.\u00a0 To allow the richest to own the means by which we receive the truth is to enable oligarchy.\u00a0 To allow the worst demagogues free rein is to open wide the ages to tyranny.<\/h4>\n
<\/p>\n
Our duty is to stop brutality.\u00a0 Our responsibility is to hold the powerful accountable.\u00a0 Our moral obligation is to protect the vulnerable.<\/h4>\n
<\/p>\n
Putin must be stopped.\u00a0 Trump must be held accountable.\u00a0 Rightwing politicians who encourage white Christian nationalism must be condemned.\u00a0 Celebrity pundits who fuel racism and xenophobia must be denounced and defunded.\u00a0 Police who kill innocent Black people must be brought to justice.\u00a0 Powerful men who sexually harass or abuse women must be prosecuted.\u00a0 CEOs whom treat their employees badly must be exposed and censored.\u00a0 Billionaires who bribe lawmakers to cut their taxes or exempt them from regulations must be penalized, and lawmakers who accept such bribes must be sanctioned.<\/h4>\n
<\/p>\n
Norms and laws must prevent such brutality. This is what civilization demands.\u00a0 This is why the fight is worth it.<\/h4>\n
Civil society must stand up to bullies everywhere.\u00a0 Do not ever acquiesce.<\/h4>\n
<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WE\u00a0 MUST\u00a0 STOP\u00a0 THE BULLIES Our duty in a civil society is to stop brutality.\u00a0 Our responsibility is to hold the powerful accountable.\u00a0 Our moral obligation is to protect the vulnerable. Consider the pattern: Putin invades Ukraine.\u00a0 Trump refuses to concede and promotes his Big Lie.\u00a0 Rightwing politicians in America and Europe…","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-larrynorton","post-1840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wisdom","no-post-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8bppg-tG","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1840"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1841,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1840\/revisions\/1841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}