Comment by thegrimmest
2 years ago
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.
2 years ago
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.
Why all these appeals to "core liberal values"? You can't justify a bad idea by saying "but it's part of liberalism." If that's true, it just means that liberalism is a bad ideology.
Who says that's what "free" means? Why should we be free only from physical harm and not emotional harm? You can't claim an ideology is self-evident when it rests on arbitrary definitions of terms.
Besides, your definition is flawed. Does sexual assault count as a physical or an emotional harm, if it causes no physical injuries? There are many forms of sexual assault which cause exclusively emotional trauma. Are we not entitled to be "free" from these?
I think I'm going to leave it there.
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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