Comment by flir
2 years ago
Bearing in mind we're talking about bullying here, which interventions are going to trample your fundamental civil rights?
Unless we're going with a reductio ad absurdum panopticon solution, I can't think of any way in which more robust interventions in bullying would be a bad thing.
People have the right to be and to raise bullies as long as their behaviour is nonviolent. As tasteless as it is, there is no law against socially excluding and humiliating people. Nor should there be.
Why the limit on physical violence? Why's that the universal line in the sand that society should enforce?
Because it's unambiguous, already a core liberal value, and because the enforcement mechanisms for violating the law are invariably physical (arrest, imprisonment). "Free" means "Free from the threat of illegitimate violence", not "Free from the possibility of having your feelings hurt". It would be unjust to impose physical consequences for non-physically-infringing actions.
2 replies →
We have anti discrimination laws.
The difference between violent and non-violent bullying can be closer than you'd think. Also, and please note I have much experience in this, physical violence was the one thing I was in permanent fear of as a child but having decades now passed by I came to understand it was the emotional violence that did by far the most damage to me and my siblings. We will not recover.
Meta comment: people like you can argue on the basis of abstractions because clearly that's all you have to argue from – you obviously have no experience of child abuse. And I'm glad of that, but please be careful putting about your opinions ("...no law against socially excluding and humiliating people. Nor should there be.") with Dunning-Kruger boosted confidence.
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