One of the oldest themes in my columns is the concept of the “hidden law.” Maybe that’s why I liked this email (sent to me and Geraghty) even if I don’t completely agree with it:

I think it a simple rule of life: Throw a cup of beer in someone’s face you get your a** kicked. I think this a conservative position; it has been a rule for thousands of years. This rule has been passed down from our Mongol, Viking, even the French forefathers. I have personally observed this rule in effect in the civilized and conservative communities of South Philadelphia and the Harvard campus. Why should we expect 20 year olds to ignore thousands of years of social conditioning simply because they make $6 million a year?
Artest showed great initiative and perseverance in kicking that guy’s ass, a model of individual responsibility in a self regulating society. In fact, absent the subsequent activities of lawyers, I am certain that the a**-kickee will think twice about throwing further cups of beer. To paraphrase Robert A. Heinlein ‘an a** kicking society is a polite society’.
I grew up in South Philly (yo) and strongly believe that ‘taking a beating’ for improper conduct is a social good. During the 1980’s, and I assume to this day, the honorable Philadelphia police would offer a beating as an alternative to arrest for minor offenses. If you took the beating the cops then thought of you as a stand-up kid.