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Another story the media Will Not cover
In no other country is power spread throughout the populace as it is in the US. We have the collective power to vote representatives in as well as out of government to fit our needs. We also have significant personal power in that we are the most well armed populace in the world. Each armed person has the ultimate power to take another's life. I and everyone I know who owns a gun takes this potential power very seriously. But why is an armed populace necessary? It is not that we need an armed citizenry to fight a potential corrupt government. It is the fact that this power is spread throughout the people that has kept our government from evolving into corruption in the first place.
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Another story the media Will Not cover
This is a little long but somewhat timely with the recent fighting in our little tractor sandbox. 
Policies against bullies won't work
By Jerome Christenson / Winona Daily News
King Canute is alive, well and writing education policy statements.
You remember His Majesty, he's the fellow who had his throne set up on the seashore at low tide and commanded the sea to stay put.
He ended up with wet feet.
Since then he's lowered his sights a bit. Now he's ordering mean, little kids to "be nice."
Or else.
Yup, by policy, given proper first and second readings, with revisions, majority votes and the appropriate enshrinement in thick, administrative manuals, school officialdom is putting an end to the common schoolyard bully.
Or so they think.
As a kid who went through childhood as prime bully-bait I hate to tell 'em, it ain't gonna work.
As the adult, that kid became, I can tell ‘em, I sure hope it doesn't work.
Oh, I suppose they have good intentions and all n these folks usually do. They want to protect kids from pretty much anybody or anything that "is intended to cause or is perceived as causing distress to one or more students…" and they spend five single-spaced, footnoted pages of convoluted legalese spelling out how to do it.
To condense and translate, mandated juvenile social harmony will be attained through compulsory tattling followed by a multi-stage investigation the likes of which hasn't been seen since the Warren Commission; followed by the tattler being placed in a witness protection program, presumably to be relocated to a remote Iowa county until the whole thing blows over.
I'll say it again, it ain't gonna work … I'm glad it ain't gonna work.
Our kids need bullies.
Let me explain.
I was a sawed-off, runty kid with thick glasses and a big mouth, the kind of kid that attracted bullies like a tax cut attracts Republicans. Being my parent's oldest, I didn't have a big brother to bully me at home; I had to wait until my first day of school to meet my first bully.
I'll call him LeRoy, because that's his name. He pointed out I was puny, dressed funny and had the wrong kind of lunch box. Then he pushed me into the mud.
I didn't like that. That night I told Mom all about it. She told me I'd have to fight my own battles.
On the second day of school, LeRoy pushed me into the mud again.
I got up and hit him in the face. After his nose stopped bleeding, we both got sent to the principal. By the time the two of us finished sitting out a week's worth of recesses as punishment for fighting, we got along pretty well.
I learned to stand up for myself. LeRoy learned that even a muddy, runty kid can pack a mean right jab. That's a lot of education to pack into the second day of school.
In time I learned that bullies weren't going to just go away. There was a kid bigger and meaner than LeRoy just waiting to take his place, and I'd have to figure out how to deal with him … and the kid after him and after him… Teachers and principals lined up with my folks to help n "Don't tattle to me," they said, "You have to learn to fight your own battles."
And I did. We all did. With no help from caring adults we discovered that when three or four or ten of us cornered a playground thug behind the town band shell and left him to make his way home scuffed, bleeding and without his pants — with further fair warning that next time his underwear also would be forfeit — it had a wonderfully civilizing influence on his future behavior. Call it vigilante justice, participatory democracy, ad hoc conflict resolution or the application of positive peer pressure — we learned to fight our own battles. Some we won. Others we lost. What we learned served us well. Except for the ones in prison, we all survived to become reasonably decent, reasonably productive adults. Even the kid everybody called "Wedgie" went on to invent thong underwear…
King Canute's policy writers threaten to take that all away … turn what should become tough, independent kids into so many simpering, whining tattletales.
They can mandate that the schoolyard become a bully-free zone all they like, but it ain't gonna happen.
Being a bully is too much fun … especially when nobody's learning to fight back.
If you don't believe me, put the question to Saddam.
It ain't gonna work. Policy or no policy.
I hope the king is wearing his boots.
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Another story the media Will Not cover
Chief, I might be out of touch with kids these days but I doubt it. Including my own schooling as well as my kids I have been involved with schools for the past 40+ years. My oldest is 28, my youngest is 8. Your points are well taken but the problems with gangs and the problems with bullies are two different things. Bullies tend to work alone or with a couple of cronies who act as his/her audience. They were around when I was in school, when you were in school and they're there now. When a bully sees a possible weaker kid and starts in on him, the best thing the kid can do is stand up for himself. In a bad situation it's throwing a punch, hopefully they won't have to. This takes away the "entertainment" the bully gives his cronies when the kid starts whining. Without an audience the bully is just a jerk.
The main reason I want my kids to stand up for themselves is because the bullies are not only in school. They grow up too. I want my kids to know how to be assertive in their adult lives too.
I think our common desire is to give our kids the best opportunity we can.
Dave
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