Is There a Bullying Epidemic in the U.S.?

Asks Nick Gillespie, at the Wall Street Journal, "Stop Panicking About Bullies" (via Hit & Run):

I have no interest in defending the bullies who dominate sandboxes, extort lunch money and use Twitter to taunt their classmates. But there is no growing crisis. Childhood and adolescence in America have never been less brutal. Even as the country's overprotective parents whip themselves up into a moral panic about kid-on-kid cruelty, the numbers don't point to any explosion of abuse. As for the rising wave of laws and regulations designed to combat meanness among students, they are likely to lump together minor slights with major offenses. The antibullying movement is already conflating serious cases of gay-bashing and vicious harassment with things like…a kid named Cheese having a tough time in grade school.

Read it all at the link.

Turns out Gillespie was himself a geek in grade school, and so, I suppose, were most of us.