Spin Dry

Without looking up the party of the lawmaker who proposed this, I knew he was a Democrat. Because, yes, liberals sometimes do come up with really stupid ideas as well. It's just that their stupid ideas tend to be at least morally defensible.

Should parents be allowed to spank their children? Massachusetts lawmakers will be debating that question following the filing of a bill that would ban corporal punishment in the commonwealth.

NewsCenter 5's Kelly Tuthill reported that state Rep. James Marzilli, Jr., of Arlington, Mass., is one of the sponsors of the bill, which prohibits everything from spanking to "hot saucing," which involves putting undiluted Tabasco sauce in a child's mouth.

Now, hot saucing, rinsing mouths out with soap and more flagrant forms of child torture, fine. Those we can do without. But, especially for children who don't have a moral sense of right and wrong yet but do have a sense of "ow, that hurt", sometimes a smack on the ass is the only thing that will get through to them.

And I'm not talking a Passion of the Christ type rampage with a leather belt. Maybe three swats max, in the case of particularly heinous and stupid behavior that can possibly endanger life -- like little Billy has just set fire to the living room curtains.

It's really the same as raising dogs. Puppies aren't sophisticated enough to understand language or tone of voice, but a thump with a rolled-up newspaper gets the message across. By the same token, it is always wrong to hit a dog (or an adult), with the possible exception of stopping either of them from going batshit crazy on you or someone else. That's because they should have learned better by then.

My point is, things like grounding or taking away privileges or whatever will not always work with all children, or with any children at certain points in their development. Make them go to their room, and they'll just steam to themselves about how unfair you are, then secretly turn on the DVD player or fire up the GameBoy and will have learned nothing -- except that, next time, they should try to not get caught.

And, short of outright abuse and torture -- the aforementioned hot saucing, for example -- it's really up to the parents to discipline their children as they see fit. If they don't believe in spanking, fine. If they do, and don't cause permanent physical injury, that's their choice and their style.

To those of you who think that any spanking at all is child abuse, I suggest you adjust your definitions. That's like saying changing a diaper constitutes molestation.

We already have laws that prohibit child abuse, and these should always be enforced when appropriate. But it's not appropriate, as noted in the article, to arrest a father for spanking his child, and it is far from appropriate to intrude into parents' lives with a law that removes what is sometimes the best and only option left in cases of discipline.

What's the alternative? Trying to reason with a six year-old? Telling Tommy to go to the quiet loft after he punches his little sister in the head, and think about what he's done? Yeah, like any of those will work. Use that kind of "discipline," and you get stories of nine year-olds strangling their playmates, of teenagers shooting up their high schools.

In an ideal world, of course, we would be able to raise children without physical punishment -- but American society is going to take a lot of work first in that regard. And this is where right meets left in the blame game -- the left cannot try to remove physical discipline in a world where the right has allowed physical violence to flourish, and where being tough is considered an asset.

As long as the W's of the world lead by example and use the example of lying to invade a sovereign nation, parents are going to have to keep spanking their kids to get the lesson across -- don't do that.

Someone should spank Rep. James Marzilli, Jr., and the other sponsors of this bill, then send them off to the cloak room for a time out.