Cheaters and sticklers

Over at Slate, Emily Bazelon has this to say about playing by the rules:

The cheaters have to learn to play fair, and the sticklers have to figure out when to let a few things slide, for the sake of the game.

Now, I could talk about how this strikes me as an apologia for the ChiCom cheating menace (an issue I have covered perhaps a little too zealously, being a stickler myself). Instead, I’ll focus on the real world aspects of giving cheaters an inch: if you do that, they’ll just keep taking inches until they take the whole mile. There is something woefully naive about saying that the cheaters “have to learn to play fair.” Learn how? Who will teach them, if not the sticklers? And why, once they realize cheating is okay, would they ever stop?

In other words: Emily’s kid was in the right. His friends cheated, and he called them out on it. Good for him. Instead of chastising him for his good moral sense in order to keep the kids from making too much noise (heaven forbid!), maybe she should have praised him for following the agreed-upon rules.