Wednesday, March 11, 2015

The Ender Wiggin Method

The surest way to stop a bully is to beat the tar out of him.

Those who have been physically bullied understand this.  Those who haven't, usually do not, and they appeal to negotiation or "peaceful methods."  But when a bully is irrationally violent, negotiation never works.  You talk nicely to him, and "teach" him a better way, and appeal to reason and logic and emotion, and he beats you up again.

Only when a bully is rational can negotiation and peaceful methods bear fruit.

In Ender's Game, Ender Wiggin understood this.  Asked why he mercilessly beat up a bully, he said he was stopping all future incidents as well.  Similarly in A Christmas Story, Ralphie Parker stopped his bully by speaking the only language the bully understood -- fisticuffs.  We could find millions of similar real-world stories.

The current extremist religious zealots wreaking havoc in the world and their sympathizers are irrational bullies.  No amount of negotiation or peaceful action can stop their deeply held hatred of things they interpret as against their "religion."  Their goal is to destroy "the West," meaning all things that are not their interpretation of religion, and to force everyone to believe and live their way, by force if necessary.

There is no negotiating with such irrational bullies.  History demonstrates this conclusively.  No such murderous thugs have ever been stopped peacefully.

They can only be stopped by being stopped.  Yes, that means destroying their ability to wage war; it means "killing people and breaking things," as Colin Powell famously said.

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