The Wall Street Journal this weekend printed a column and interview  with Nick Gillespie the President of the Reason Foundation, a self-described “libertarian” think-tank funded by the Koch Family Foundations and who’s closely ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council aka ALEC whose agenda agenda includes rolling back civil rights which downplays bullying in todays society.

Gillespie suggests that kids “are safer and better-behaved” than in decades past and that parents are just “overprotective and thin-skinned”:

But is America really in the midst of a “bullying crisis,” as so many now claim? I don’t see it. I also suspect that our fears about the ubiquity of bullying are just the latest in a long line of well-intentioned yet hyperbolic alarms about how awful it is to be a kid today.[…]

Now that schools are peanut-free, latex-free and soda-free, parents, administrators and teachers have got to worry about something. Since most kids now have access to cable TV, the Internet, unlimited talk and texting, college and a world of opportunities that was unimaginable even 20 years ago, it seems that adults have responded by becoming ever more overprotective and thin-skinned.

Gillepsie also  invoked the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a group that defends the religious free speech of students, often when it is anti-gay in nature. In other words, he’d rather highlight the work of those defending the bullies than those defending their victims.

It’s irresponsible and shocking that the WSJ would print such a biased article from a writer with dubious backings.  Bullying is a significant and deadly problem. To trivialize its impact in any way, shape, or form is to discount the real consequences its victims face.

Bad call WJF.  Bad call.

Source:  Think Progress