Gairdner on spanking

From: William Gairdner [mailto:wgairdner@idirect.com]
Sent: Monday, July 09, 2001 12:43 PM
To: Gar Knutson; Steve Peters; Robert Habkirk; Andre Reymer; Bryan Flint
Subject: spanking controversy

Gentlemen -

As a writer with a national reputation of sorts, I am somewhat reluctant to enter into a controversy I have not witnessed first hand that concerns such delicate matters as parental control of children, religious belief, and public safety.

However, the optics on this case are not good, and I urge those involved in what appears to be an unjustified legal childnapping to reconsider their hasty actions.

Canada is currently passing though a phase of "abuse hysteria" in which increasing numbers of ordinary human relations that have endured for millennia and served society families, and nations very well, are under public scrutiny and suspicion. This is creating a bizarre public mood in which teachers are afraid to discipline unruly and violent students, indeed, are often attacked by such students; parents are afraid to spank their children when clearly justified, and are often sworn at and vulgarized by them; and public servants, such as the police - who ought to be devoting themselves to the real crimes in our midst such as breaking and entering, fraud, rape, and murder - are caught in the middle, pawns of zealous public authorities and lower level bureaucrats or social workers on a mission to purify society. 

At the root of the spanking controversy is the fact that Canadians are confused about the important moral distinctions that must be kept in mind to distinguish spanking from hitting or beating.

I am including an article I published in the National Post recently on this very topic in the hope it will help you draw out this distinction and perhaps help to bring this sorry case to a proper end.

Sincerely

William Gairdner, Author,
The Trouble With Canada
The War Against The Family

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For The National Post
by William Gairdner
December 9, 1999

The anti-spanking folks have been on a roll this week, arguing that millions of Canadian parents who say they spank their children if necessary, should be pronounced criminals.

If they succeed, we will turn into a nation of domestic spies, despite the obvious fact that the vast majority of parents are responsible mothers and fathers who so deeply love their children they would die for them if necessary.

Legal busybodies use the arguments that there is abuse in the guise of spanking, that all spanking is "hitting," that it is not "logical" for parents to use violence to stop violence, that spanking causes more violence in society, and that it offends "children’s rights."

Unfortunately there have always been a very small number of unreasonable, crazy, or besotted parents who beat up their own children. This is a matter of the greatest sadness, and the full force of the law should be used in punishment. But to say we should outlaw all spanking because some parents are rotten, is like saying we should outlaw all policing because some cops are rotten, or all laws because some are badly applied. The first step is to make the right distinctions.

Spanking and hitting have always had opposite motives. The former is reasonable force used out of love and concern for the child to prevent moral and/or physical harm by the child to him or herself, or to others. But except for self-defense, hitting is done out of personal hatred or anger and has no other motive than to harm. It has no moral component. Without this, however, neither spanking nor any other form of discipline or law can have a meaning.

Is it so illogical to spank a child who hits? Well, once we agree that spanking has a crucial moral component that hitting lacks by definition, then when all else fails it is legitimate to use a small pain now, a moral reminder, to prevent a greater future pain. Pre-emptive pain is a universal concept justified in law. It is used within nations and between them all the time to prevent catastrophes and rebellions, and all criminal law relies utterly on the fear of pre-emptive pain. A spanking is just a form of pre-emptive pain used within the home to prevent a more painful domestic rebellion.

As for the belief that spanking begets violence? When we stop spanking, which is moral, we get violence, which is not. The best litmus-test is the public schools. Thirty years ago spanking as pre-emptive pain was widely accepted and there was almost zero violence in the schools. Spanking was suddenly eliminated, and now we have a rampant hard-drug trade in our schools, as well as the widespread use of knives, guns, gang wars, and even the tragic beating, stabbing, and shooting of other students and teachers. A public school is now the most dangerous place to leave a child. Many schools require full-time uniformed officers on premises. A lot of teachers wear alarm buzzers to call for protection. In other words, as soon as we stopped spanking the kids ... they started beating us.

What about the rights defense? Children are a special class of human being because they are naturally dependent on their parents for protection and care. Their rights are largely political, invented by others, and defended by third parties on their behalf against their own parents. The oft-cited Convention on the Rights of the Child, for example, grants children things like rights of association, of privacy, of information, and security of the person. But no one knows whether this means your fourteen year-old child has a right to "associate" with a forty-year old lover against your wishes, to stash drugs in the "privacy" of a bedroom in your house, to receive "information" such as hate mail or pornography, or to get pregnant and command a tax-funded abortion without parental knowledge under the guise of "security" of the person. The only thing we know for certain about so-called children’s rights, is that they represent a huge career opportunity for lawyers, social workers and bureaucrats eager to regulate more of the private life of society formerly off-limits to their ambitions.

On this note, a recent BBC documentary showed historians discovering with astonishment from newly-released documents that most of the oppressive and ultimately very dangerous social control in National Socialist Germany was unofficial. It was sufficient simply to pass a law. Immediately, very ordinary Germans, in a mood of elated moral superiority, began a nation-wide orgy of snooping and spying on their neighbours, turning them over to the local Gestapo for things they found offensive. Like who they slept with. Or how they treated their own children.

Last week, on a TVO show about spanking, I debated Cheryl, a lawyer who is busy arguing before the court this week that all spanking is without exception violent child abuse. I asked her point blank whether or not, if she saw her dearest friend spank her defiant child, she would call up the police and have her friend locked up?

She had a lot of trouble answering. She said she would "discuss it" with her friend first. I said, Cheryl, once you criminalize all spanking, there is no discussion possible. C’mon Cheryl, I persisted: Would you have your best friend locked up, or not?

She refused to answer. But I think we know the answer.