Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel has a habit of saying really, really stupid things. He does that, of course, because he’s really, really stupid. And he seems to be a graduate of the Bryan Fischer School of Psychological Projection:
They’re bullies. And we know that we people stand up to the bully on the playground – the bully on the playground intimidates, that’s what he does, intimidates people into silence, into fear, into avoiding the bully. And oftentimes the bully is the paper tiger and when the righteous individual who is being bullied defends his or herself and punches the bully in the mouth, guess what, the bully more times than not has a glass jaw, falls down and then everyone on the playground says “whoa, the bully was a weakling after all.”
That’s the secularist left. The secularist left are bullies. They try to bully and intimidate and push religious intolerance and religious bigotry on everyone else.
How amusing.
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D. C. Sessions
April 23, 2012 at 9:54 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
You have to admit, spinning yourself as a victim is a great way to justify damn near anything. I’ve never yet met a bully who wasn’t a master of self-pity.
Chiroptera
April 23, 2012 at 9:58 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
…the bully more times than not has a glass jaw, falls down and then everyone on the playground says “whoa, the bully was a weakling after all.”
You know what the Religious Right reminds me of? That drunk guy in the bar who tries to pick a fight, you keep punching him, he keeps falling down, and he keeps picking himself up, crying like a baby, and daring you to do it again.
Reginald Selkirk
April 23, 2012 at 10:02 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Off-topic:
What Larry Klayman is up to these days
tuxedocartman
April 23, 2012 at 10:13 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Of all the folksy, old-wives tale, feel-good down-home advice that pollutes American mentality, this one gets under my skin and pisses me off more than most. It’s victim blaming in its purest, simplest form. “Oh, if you had acted differently, or been more assertive or violent, you wouldn’t be bullied.”
When you’re a kid, and you stand up to a bigger child who’s bullying you, do you know what happens 99% of the time? They escalate their bullying of you, either verbally or physically. It’s about dominance, and bullies will assert it. But our violence-drenched culture can’t accept sympathizing with victims who would not fight back. They’re weak, and must be shunned.
These days, there’s little about American culture that doesn’t sicken me.
Ed Brayton
April 23, 2012 at 10:15 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Reginald: Already have something written up about that. There’s more going on behind the scenes in that case that I can’t talk about, but that development is interesting.
Doug Little
April 23, 2012 at 10:43 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I thought these people hated Hollywood.
evilDoug
April 23, 2012 at 10:54 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Here are some more of the useless turd’s words from a few days ago:
from Ophelia’s post
http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2012/04/bullying-is-healthy/
d cwilson
April 23, 2012 at 11:09 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Never thought we’d actually have a “pro-bullying” faction in America, but here we are.
So, who wants to take bets on how far away we are from the final collapse of our civilization?
jimmiraybob
April 23, 2012 at 11:18 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Remember when MLK Jr. and Medgar Evers and the rest of those liberal commie thugs kept bullying the innocent white Christian lynch mobs and shooters and bombers? Trying to force decent Christians into betraying their deeply held religious values?
I do. I’m pretty sure I know where Matt Barber and the Liberty Counsel would have stood.
RE: Punching the bully.
Having had a considerable amount of experience in this field as a child of the late 50s and 60s (in a largely Catholic Town if that has anything to do with it), and by a lot of experience I mean a lot, I recall the first time that I hauled off and slugged someone that was physically bullying me in the face – there was a moment when time stood still as I silently marveled at the feat and the bully did the necessary calculations to recover and then beat the holy bejesus out of me – he and his two brothers. This was pretty much the pattern of the next few years. Thank the FSM that blood is a renewable resource. I also have to thank the FSM that guns were still a rarity.
Eventually I prevailed but that was only bad news for the next target(s). Not a recommended way to grow up.
So, from my experience I’d say that the 99% figure mentioned above might be a little on the low side.
dingojack
April 23, 2012 at 11:23 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“They’re bullies… [T]he bully on the playground intimidates, that’s what he does, intimidates people into silence, into fear, into avoiding the bully. And oftentimes the bully is the paper tiger and when the righteous individual who is being bullied defends his or herself… guess what, the bully more times than not has a glass jaw,… and then everyone on the playground says ‘whoa, the bully was a weakling after all’.”
Nice to see even Matt Barber supports The Day of Silence, in pripciple at least (when it comes to doing stuff in the real world, not so much, he’s got minions for that).
Dingo
Francisco Bacopa
April 23, 2012 at 12:05 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The whole idea that if you stand up to the bully you solve things is often false. Bullies are often socially popular and well connected. If you stand up to them effectively, the teachers, school administration, and even the police will get involved and blame the victim.
That’s what current anti-bullying efforts are about, removing the social and institutional support that backs up the bully.
Chris from Europe
April 23, 2012 at 12:24 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@11
These efforts also require that the responsible officials aren’t pro-bully which isn’t necessarily the case:
http://pamshouseblend.firedoglake.com/2012/04/22/the-office-of-civil-rights-lets-gay-bashing-flagler-florida-school-administrators-off-the-hook/
EricJ
April 23, 2012 at 12:24 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yes the secular leftist are the dangerous ones we have to worry about.
http://news.yahoo.com/norway-killer-picked-victims-had-leftist-look-104209452.html
theschwa
April 23, 2012 at 12:58 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It is all the secular Left’s fault. They keep threatening to use their atheist/secular supermajority in Congress to pass laws if the Christian minority doesn’t cave into their threats.
Only after some brave Xtians fought back did we ever learn that the atheists do NOT have the Legislative power we for decades thought they had!
typecaster
April 23, 2012 at 1:51 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@8
Depending on the news of the day, I might put a few bucks on six months, 14 days.
scienceavenger
April 23, 2012 at 1:57 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Punch the bully and he’ll leave you alone” is one of the dumbest things parents tell their kids, right up there with “ignore the people teasing you and they’ll leave you alone”. No, no they won’t. They’ll keep on worse, and the bully will kick your ass.
As for the Religious Whiners, I’m waiting any day for Barber and his ilk to cry about how mean those faggots were to break his fingers with their jaw.
godlesspanther
April 23, 2012 at 2:56 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Hateful, vicious, dangerous, and mentally unbalanced.
This is the kind of rhetoric that gets people to leave religious faith. If you read testimonies from ex-christians or ex-whatevers you often see that when people wake up and see just how hateful that stuff is — they decide it’s time to go. Who the fuck would actually want to be affiliated with a group that is, in no uncertain terms, in favor of bullying, violence, and hatred? To me it seems like a no-brainer — run from that group fast, far, and now.
Statistics demonstrate that religious groups are shrinking as the non-religious community is growing. Creeps like Barber and Fischer are fully aware of this. Furthermore they are fully aware that this intense hatred and condoning violence is contributing to the decrease in sheep.
Why do they do it? Because if someone leaves the cult because they are violent and hateful — that’s OK with them. They don’t want those people anyway. They are weeding out. They want to have, among their ranks, only those who will obey regardless. Only those who will go all the way — those who will kill and die for the cult. All others are not welcome.
Oh yeah — and be sure to believe them when they tell you that atheists are just like Nazis.
tacitus
April 23, 2012 at 3:55 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This.
I’m sure there is a semblance of true to the claim that kids will stop being bullied if they stand up for themselves — but context matters.
When bullies go searching for likely kids to pick on, they’re not always going to get it right first time. Some quiet, weak or compliant-seeming kids are quite capable of sticking up for themselves, and any bully who goes after them is quickly going to learn to leave them alone, and turn their attention to more promising targets. I also have little doubt that some bullied kids are resourceful enough to eventually figure out a way to get the bullying to stop.
Unfortunately, being able to point to these cases where fighting back has worked propagates the myth that all kids should be able to do it, which only pours scorn on those who cannot, making it less likely they will get the help they need.
Ironically, the worst offenders — the macho right wing blowhards who believe that strength is the answer to everything — are the biggest bunch of crybabies and fearmongers out there. If they don’t have any real threats to quiver about, they’ll just invent them so that they can continue to wallow in their perceived victimhood.
Ace of Sevens
April 23, 2012 at 5:55 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Also, kids don’t have good judgment. Encouraging them to punch bullies can easily turn into punching anyone who gets on their nerves. I speak from experience. I punched a kid when I was in fifth grade because I thought he was making fun of me, when he was actually just confused because that’s how I had been taught to solve problems.
ebohlman
April 23, 2012 at 8:50 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Chiroptera: Oh great, now I’m going to have “Tubthumping” running through my head all night.
Everyone: Yeah, anecdotes and testimonials about kids fighting back aren’t really evidence of anything other than that it sometimes works. The problem is that it’s impossible, based on anecdotes and testimonials, to tell how often that sometimes is. That’s why we require drug companies to run trials involving systematic observation and report all the results, not just the favorable ones; if your headache pill makes headaches worse in 90% of people who take it and better in 10%, in a trial of 10,000 people you could get 100 positive testimonials (of course, if your product is legally considered a “supplement” you’re actually allowed to get away with that, thanks to Orrin Hatch and Tom Harkin).
dan4
April 23, 2012 at 9:53 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Unless the specific bullying in question involves a clear-cut need for self-defense, wouldn’t the act punching a bully in the mouth (or any other body part, for that matter) constitute an assault and battery?
jimmiraybob
April 24, 2012 at 9:31 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Unfortunately, being able to point to these cases where fighting back has worked propagates the myth that all kids should be able to do it, which only pours scorn on those who cannot, making it less likely they will get the help they need.
I agree whole heartedly that fighting back against physical bullying is not a good answer if there is an alternative. And as a society, at least some parts of society, we have finally found and are working for the alternative – a responsive infrastructure and vocal outcry that take the problem seriously. The problem in even the few being successful is a concurrent and post traumatic impact to them that is impossible to recognize until years later if at all. And, as I had hoped would be conveyed, it only passes the problem onto someone else.