Spanking theory is a lot of bunk

Edmonton Sun - August 5, 2001

By TED BYFIELD

News story: The seven children of an apparently functional Aylmer, Ont., couple are dragged shouting and weeping away from their neat, tidy home by a contingent of police and social workers and made temporary wards of the province.

Why? Were the youngsters sexually abused? No. Physically injured? No. Imprisoned, starved, tortured? No. No. No.

Then did they appear persecuted, miserable, ill behaved? No. The neighbour next door described them as "clean, well dressed, well behaved, happily playing on their bikes and with toys, and always smiling."

Then why? Because, says the Ontario Children's Aid Society, the parents routinely disciplined their children by spanking.

But that's altogether legal in Canada. The Ontario courts have just said so, unless the Crown can prove the spanking was excessive. However the Ontario society has apparently decided that any spanking at all shall be deemed excessive.

News story: A cover article in Time magazine asks: "Do kids have too much power?" The answer: unquestionably. The implication: That we're raising a bunch of spoiled brats who are lippy, constantly challenging parental and school authority, and have respect for neither adults nor one another.

TV story: Vince Cellini, acting as host of CNN's Talk-Back Live produces a major show on the question: "Are we spoiling our kids?" The answer: Yes, and badly, but we can't help it.

Parents work so hard they feel guilty and give their kids anything they ask for. How can they say no to a new mountain bike with two new cars in the garage? Divorced parents compete for the kids' affection by vying against each other in generosity.

Result: Children never hear the word "no" and when their parents order them to do something, they take this as an occasion, not for obedience, but for "dialogue."

Then Cellini asked his studio audience to raise their hands if they ever spanked their kids. Practically every hand in the studio went up. However, some said, they still fear the onslaught of social workers when they do it.

They meant, of course, people like the Children's Aid Society that has taken upon itself to enforce a law that doesn't exist.

Ask our social planners why they're doing this and they're quick with answers: Children who are spanked are being taught that "violence" is acceptable. Children raised under threat of "violence" will therefore be more prone to it. Surveys show that men who beat their wives were spanked as children.

What saps they take us for. Go back 35 years and practically every youngster was spanked - future wife-beaters and future non-wife-beaters. For their contention to be true, they would have to establish that people now in their 50s, nearly all of whom were spanked, are far more prone to violence than younger people. There is no evidence of this whatsoever.

In any event we now see a generation raised without "violence." How is it turning out?

Answer: It's recording the most violent levels of juvenile crime we have ever experienced. Children in seemingly tranquil neighbourhoods go to school armed. Teachers are threatened. We have to inaugurate "zero-tolerance" policies on "bullying." Children are wounded or slain by other school children.

The supposed "reform," that is, is producing precisely the opposite of what it promised. The dogma - Thou Shalt Not Spank - which is being ferociously enforced by social agencies, is plainly a lie, a fraud and a failure.

The Aylmer kids have been returned to their parents on condition they not be spanked until the court case against them is resolved. Social workers meanwhile patrol the house. The integrity of the family is being attacked by officialdom.

The Children's Aid obviously plans to make an example of this family as a warning to the public. They don't care if they lose the case. The idea is to frighten parents from spanking.

Maybe another kind of example could be set here. What we need is a public fund enabling these parents to personally sue for their every last nickel the bureaucrats who made this decision. That too would teach a lesson and it would be a long, long time before a case like this happened again.

The goal of state-control, even state-ownership of children has been the mark of all totalitarian system throughout history. It began on a large scale in the USSR — from the very start of the Russian Revolution. It continued to be pursued in Nazi Germany, in all of the communist countries, and especially in the People's Republic of China.

Now that feminism spread from its communist roots (see Matriarchy in USSR — off-site) to the whole world, the forcible removal of children from their parents' homes is escalating and spreading throughout the world as well, foremost in those countries where feminist totalitarianism made the greatest advances.

The pursuit of the planned destruction of the family is part of the systematic re-engineering not only of civilization but of humanity itself. Think of it as evolution in action.

It is unavoidable: in any society in which the basest ideology, the one that is the cheapest because it requires no sacrifices of its adherents, is permitted to thrive unopposed and in which all moral standards are normalized down to the level of that ideology, that ideology — no matter how deplorable or despicable it may be in absolute terms — will rise to dominate all others.