A few of things have occurred in the past 24 hours that have me thinking ... are we raising a nation to be a bunch of wimps.

The first thing that happened was something fairly stupid, cheesy and definitely not new, but it's been bothering me for a while.  Taylor Swift is a person my daughter is starting to look up to and right now, I do not object to it.  I watched a 60 Minutes thing on her last night, because my daughter wanted to see it.  Her one song - a song I can never seem to get out of my head once I hear it - is called Mean, and is apparently become an anthem for the "anti-bullying" movement in schools. Being a "victim" of bullying myself a lot in my childhood, I think I can consider myself a expert.  Also I dare say that New Jersey bullying is some of the worst bullying because the people up there are just mean by nature.  It might have something to do with the population density and people being more defensive of their personal space, or the cold weather making people generally grumpy but once I moved down to the Carolinas, I noticed a major difference.

This may come to be a surprise to some, but although some of the bullying may have gone overboard at times, perhaps too violent or personal, I see it as a rite of passage, in some ways.  It made me who I am and I survived it.  Sure, these days people are bullied to the point of suicide and I never want to see that happen.  But is that a function of the bullying? Has it gotten worse?  Or is it it a function of how we are raising our children, perhaps sheltering them too much.  I guess you can infer from this that I am saying that perhaps those that take the suicide way out are wimps but isn't that what we say when its all said and done - suicide is the cowards way out?  I don't intend to be hard or cold but although I do empathize with those that go through these situations, NEVER did I EVER see suicide as an option.  Does that not give the bullies the win? I digress from my point however...

Getting more back on point - bullying and raising a nation of wimps - should we really be making such a strong push to stop bullying.  Some bullying hardens a person and prepares them for the real world.  As many know, I debate a lot.  I try not to make it personal but even strongly debating or passionately pursuing a point can be seen as bullying by some.  And not to outstretch my point too far - perhaps this can be linked to the problems in Congress now and the people's perception of this.  The Right is being seen as bullies because they won't back down on some points.  It's all about compromise now.  Well, compromise is what got us here in the first place!  Anyway, I digress again ...

My point is - a little bullying is a good thing, I feel.  I survived it and am a stronger person for it.  I am still a geek (one of the things I was bullied about) but I came to embrace that as a middle-finger jester to those that bullied me.

The other thing is that this morning, I noticed once again that my daughter is very argumentative at times.  I joke that she gets that from her mother because one of the more attractive things I find about my wife is that she is feisty.  I like feisty women and my wife is one of the feistiest if you get her going.  But we fuss at Taylor about talking back and all that, but I don't want to do that too much.  I want my daughter to be feisty.  I want her to stand up for her rights when it's appropriate.  I want her to ask questions and be vocal about it.  Yup, that takes guts.  That takes courage.  But I want my daughter (as well as my other kids) to have the passion enough to overcome whatever insecurities she has when she needs to.

Some would say that our founding fathers were feisty.  If they were from the stock of today's society, they would be complacent, apathetic malcontents that would go to a park and sit out there screaming for entitlements.  Thank God they had the testicular fortitude to do more than just whine.  I want my children to do more than just whine.

So to the point - a little feistiness and argumentativeness is a good thing too.

But these are two social characteristics that we are squelching and turning our society into sheep.  I want more our of my children.  I want my children to be wolves!