Children do not
learn bullying from textbooks.
They learn it from watching adults with power.
In schools, we know
this instinctively. A child who sees intimidation rewarded will imitate it. A
child who sees force replace dialogue will copy that behaviour. Bullying, at
its core, is learned conduct.
That is why bullying
among young Americans being more acute is not surprising.
America itself has
normalised bullying on the world stage.
From sanctions that
strangle societies, to regime-change bravado, to public humiliation of weaker
states, U.S. foreign policy has often relied less on quiet authority and more
on coercion by dominance. Power is not merely exercised - it is
performed.
The recent
Venezuelan episode only sharpens this pattern. The reported kidnapping and
public mistreatment of President Maduro’s wife - symbolised by images of her
swollen, blackened eye - speaks louder than any official press release. One
image can explain what a thousand policy statements cannot: this is power
without restraint.
When the strongest
nation behaves this way, it should not be shocked when its children absorb the
same lesson.
Silent Power: America Has Done Better Before
The United States
has several strong historical examples of presidents using silent power
- restraint, legitimacy, quiet authority - instead of force. Two of the
clearest, widely respected cases are comparable in moral weight to Eisenhower
and the Suez Crisis.
History shows
that America once understood silent power. During the Suez Crisis of 1956, when
Britain, France, and Israel invaded Egypt to seize the Suez Canal, President
Eisenhower refused to back them or look away. Using financial pressure,
diplomatic authority, and one firm phone call, he forced all three allies to
withdraw - without invasion, missiles, or bravado. A few years later, during
the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy again chose restraint under immense
pressure, imposing a naval quarantine, opening back-channel diplomacy with
Moscow, and allowing a face-saving exit for the Soviet Union. Nuclear war was
avoided not through dominance, but through self-control and legitimacy.
A truly powerful
nation does not need to intimidate. Force is not strength; it is the last
refuge of insecurity. Bullies, whether in schools or geopolitics, often act
not from confidence but from inner uncertainty - fear of losing relevance,
control, or status.
America should ask
itself an uncomfortable question: Has greatness been replaced by bravado? Has
insecurity crept in where moral confidence once stood?
Today, loudness has
replaced leadership.
America can do better. It must
choose better teachers - restraint over aggression, dignity over domination,
moral authority over raw force. It must also be clear about what it should not
learn. America must not learn from Israel’s current example, where prolonged
use of overwhelming force and dehumanising rhetoric has produced a society in
which large majorities openly justify genocide and the killing
of innocent civilians. This is what happens when adults model cruelty,
impunity, and moral exceptionalism instead of restraint and accountability.
America is a great nation with
fundamentally good people, and it should not want its children to grow up
accepting genocide as normal or violence against innocents as defensible.
America is better than this and it deserves better.
Because when adults
stop bullying, children eventually do too.
“Blessed
are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”
(Matthew
5:5)
Peace, anas
