The lawmakers in Massachusetts are currently debating a proposal to ban the spanking of children by their parents. This is the second time Mass. lawmakers have considered this issue. A previous proposal was thrown out in 2005 - and the betting is it will fail on this occasion too. In January this year, a similar proposal brought before the California state legislature by Assemblywoman Sally Lieber (D-Mountain View) also failed. So if Mass. does throw the bill out again, will it be game over? Hardly.
Liberals see this issue as offering an unprecedented opportunity to advance their authoritarian ideology into the heart of the institution most resistant to social engineering: the family. In the bid to control how your children are brought up, Massachusetts is, for liberals, just an early skirmish in a long war.
Prior to the state review in California, a CBS/Survey USA poll found little public support for a spanking ban. While 57% of those polled were against a ban a mere 23% were for it. Yet within weeks of the legislature's snub Sally Lieber was back with essentially the same proposal - this time 'disguised' as an anti-abuse bill. On May 31 that proposal too died in committee.
Kathleen Wolf, the Arlington nurse who brought the current Massachusetts bill, claims, "Spanking isn't abuse. Spanking isn't the main issue. It's about using physical force against children for punishment." Only a postmodern mind could devise such an obscure distinction. State legislator Jay Kaufman (D-Lexington), who submitted the bill at the request of Wolf, wants to ban "the wilful infliction of physical pain or injurious or humiliating treatment." Well that sure covers spanking in my book.
Another defeat in Massachusetts may prove a set back, but it won't stop the Left's campaign to usurp the moral authority of parents - as an increasing attempt to suck in Christian support by playing the 'God card' reveals. Take Fox News' Bill O'Reilly's set-to with child psychologist and liberal activist Dr Theresa Whitehurst, author of 'How Would Jesus Raise Your Child?' on the run up to the Massachusetts hearing.
Now forgive me, I had never heard of the good doctor before this interview. Nor had I read her book. But she was there to assert her theory that spanking was not only an abuse of children's rights but also anti-Christian. Well, I have to tell you, as a long-time teacher on matters biblical, I almost choked on my Wheaties (O'Reilly's is a morning show on Fox in the UK).
This is no place for a sermon. But as liberals choose to play the God card I wish to set the record straight. First, "spare the rod and spoil the child" is unequivocal and comes straight from the Psalms. A little later, Proverbs teaches: "foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child" and that the "rod of correction will drive it from him". The Bible recognizes that this is the nature of newborns, and to allow them to continue thus just stores up trouble for the future. Let's face real world facts. All of us are born grasping, selfish and, often, quite vindictive. And we can be stubborn too about parental correctives of nay kind, especially if the ultimate sanction of force is taken off the communal table. The truth is God is just plain not on the liberal policy 'team' when it comes to outlawing the parental right to swat to make a point.
As liberals are bound to keep having a crack at this particular nut, state legislatures should know that even the inexorably liberalizing Mother of Parliaments balked at a moral 'home invasion' of this magnitude. In 2004 British lawmakers voted by a massive 424 to 75 against an outright ban on child spanking, citing enormous public opinion against it. But then liberals tend to care little for democratic ideals or public opinion. After all, why bother treading the path of winning the intellectual and moral argument, when pushing through legal precedents can circumvent it entirely?
So as parents across the land wait to hear whether Mass. will be the first state to breach the national dam of parental rights, it may be instructive to wonder just how liberals become liberals in the first place. A lack of parental discipline perhaps? And maybe a good early slap would have saved us all a whole lotta trouble?
