Liberals Just Don’t Get It

One of Tremain’s classics, well worth reposting.

Of course, even smacking lightly with an open hand is now illegal - this woman is actually stating her intent to violently abuse her child (if you listen to Sue Bradford).

In this instance, I’d stand by the rights of the cat!

But it demonstrates a vital point - this is bullshit.

Babies and children are actually fully realised humans and should be treated as such from the time they’re born. This is the first thing I learned, obviously having started from the same place we all do. But many of us forget this and treat our babies and children as if they deserve less respect than adults. Smacking kids is a good example of this: we can legally hit children, but not adults. The results are physical damage, but more so the psychological damage.

Fact is, every human being has to start from zero in terms of skills and maturity. From that point, children learn under the supervision of (hopefully 2) adults known as parents. You have to earn respect - some kids learn quickly and earn respect and privileges of adulthood early, some less so. Many just demand the privileges anyway.

Part of that process is the rights of parents over all aspects of their children’s lives. You can’t take away a stranger’s icecream or money, but parents are allowed to do that to their children. You can’t put a stranger into timeout, but parents can do that with their children. Parents have all sorts of rights - legal responsibilities would be a better word - that simply don’t apply in any other situation.

As for the phsicial damage, with pretty much the entire population having been smacked, ACC were suprisingly absent from the Section 59 debate. I guess that leaves us with “psychological damage” but there’s a problem there too - if you remove physicial punishments, all you are left with is psychological punishments.

In fact the opposite is true. The pain of physical punishment somehow releases tension - there was Malcom in the Middle episode where they demonstrated that… but I just intended to post the cartoon!