The New York Times ran an interesting profile earlier this week of Bradley Manning, the Army PFC accused of selling out his country. Manning fell in love with a drag queen, wore specially-made dogtags identifying his religion as "humanist," and refused to recite parts of the Pledge of Allegiance while in school. Who would have thunk a guy like that would go turncoat?

The unfortunately named Adrian Lamo, the hacker who turned in Bradley Manning, shed much light on the young man at the center of the Wikileaks controversy. Lamo told CNN that Manning was a person with an enormous sense of social responsibility but no sense of individual responsibility. In that one insightful line, Lamo may have taught us more about Manning than the entire 1,642-word New York Times piece.

The excellent Times article paints a portrait of a misfit, who got teased wherever he went (except Cambridge, Massachusetts, which speaks volumes about the "new towne" on the north bank of the Charles). I felt deja vu while reading it. Remember Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris? They were the two dirtbags who shot up Columbine High School over a decade ago. In the aftermath of killing more than a dozen people, Klebold and Harris were depicted as kids pushed to the brink by teasing and peer abuse. The Times piece on Manning has the same woe-is-he tone to it.

Am I supposed to think ill of the kids who pegged Bradley Manning for a loser? I don't. They got him right, just like Harris and Klebold's classmates weirded out by guys wearing trenchcoats in the summer got them right.

It is somehow more "adult" for people to ignore the signs an individual emits marking the person as bad news. Kids are too honest for such social niceties. They keep it real. Overlooking anti-social behavior isn't a sign of maturity or toleration, but is itself anti-social. Our kids were telling us something about Bradley Manning, and before him Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. We chose not to listen and had the audacity, at least implicitly, to lay part of the blame on those who fingered the true nature of Manning, Harris, and Klebold when it still mattered.

Is teasing an entirely maladaptive practice? It is often mean-spirited in its intent, but in its effect tends to compel offenders against norms to stop acting like doofuses lest they be ostracized. The downside of this is that it can smother individuality. We'd probably be better off with more individuals at the cost of suffering a few juvenile delinquents. But we are not worse off because some kids picked on Bradley Manning, Eric Harris, and Dylan Klebold. We are worse off because numerous adults looked away from their deviant behavior.

The "adult" position on teasing is that anti-social behavior should be tolerated--incentivized and reinforced in some extreme cases. Children who discourage it through teasing are the ones who are punished. In the case of Bradley Manning, his classmates in Oklahoma and Wales who ragged on him, contrary to the adults who entrusted him with top-secret material, nailed his character. Kids can be absolutely brutal, but that doesn't mean that the objects of their psychological taunts are always best off ignoring their correctives. Quit being a weirdo already.

If you are morbidly obese, if you stink, if your fly is down, if you've slept with the offensive line, your peers will let you know about it, and continuously remind you of it for several years thereafter, provided that you are young. If you are an adult and you are an offender on similar counts, your peers will laugh at you behind your back and be nice to your face. Much of children's teasing is, well, childish. But the cruelty serves the unintended purpose of pressuring kids to avoid certain maladaptive behaviors (and several adaptive ones, unfortunately, as well, i.e., ridicule often meets the kid who stands out through high grades). Alas, being different, and not merely being different in some demonstratively negative way, is enough to elicit teasing. We are talking about kids here, and not some morally and intellectually superior beings, after all.

Really old people, and really young people, often speak controversial truths. Old people could care less about what people think of them. So they say what's on their mind. Young people care too much about what people think of them. Knowing that their peers suffer from this affliction, they say what's on their mind, too.

Dan, what a complete load of BS, so teasing/ harrassing people is good? Kids are a great judge of good character? It's okay to torment people into conformity?
You've completely lost your mind.

Yeah, that is a weird post. I think what he's trying to say is that there were warning signs with this guy that "maybe" he shouldn't be in control of large amounts of sensitive material, but in an oddly roundabout and (kinda mean) way.

The guy's still a douche for doing what he did and endangering both Americans and Afghanis, and I kind of hope mr. Assange has a visit from some very hard men sometime soon, but I don't see the link between teasing and national security breaches. (sp?)

If even one death, Afghan or U.S. can be linked to his stealing the documents he should get the death penalty.
From the article it appears the kid is and always has been an arrogant prick and thats regardless of his political beliefs.
With that said.....in regards to his being teased,picked on and harrassed. It's not really smart to treat an unstable individual or anyone for that matter like a piece of garbage and not expect them to bite back at some point.
I would ask how he stayed in the military when people knew he was gay?
If he had assualted an officer at some point how was he cleared to have access to classified info?

I agree with Flynn. Part of the purpose of childhood is the seasoning one receives from one's peers. Is it fun? Hell, no. But, when I'd whine to Mom, she'd say, "sticks and stones..." Today's Americans Lite are so concerned about no one ever having their feelings hurt, they've lost the context.