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From: Jasper
Date: 10/10/01
Time: 6:27:05 PM
Charlie,
I think your example is a good one.
One of the worst things I can think of is society in which a man has to get the authorities involved every time he thinks that another man did something inappropriate. The first thing you do is tell them about it. Most times they will recognize that they screwed up and apologize.
Sometimes you have to lay them out - and then they will get up and apologize.
That happened to me when I was in the Army Reserves a hundred years ago. I was a buck sergeant and a lieutenant called me a nigger. I hit him so hard I was afraid that I had busted every bone in my hand. He went flying through the air like those stunt men you see in the movies getting yanked backward by a cord. He landed on his butt and got right up. If he was physically hurt, he didn't show it (neither did I). If he had decided to fight, I wouldn't have had a chance.
All of this took place at Summer Camp during the Vietnam War so all of the Articles of War that applied to the Regular Army applied to us. If an enlisted man strikes an officer during wartime he could spend many years in prison. But if an officer does to an enlisted man what the lieutenant did to me, he WOULD lose his commission and he could get a Bad Conduct Discharge, which is just shy of a Dishonorable. That's what could have and would have happened if either of us had taken our beef to the authorities. In practical terms, he did what he shouldn't have done and I did what I had to do. He apologized and that was the end of it.
Of course there was more to the story than I described, or I wouldn't have hit the man. But the point is, we were both men and there are some things a man just doesn't say to another without expecting to get what the lieutenant got. That expectation stops a lot of trouble before it begins - and before it can escalate to something really terrible. --Jasper