Nanny (state) knows best

Posted by Marc Hodak on December 29, 2007 under Collectivist instinct | Comments are off for this article

Spain has banned spanking. Spain, of course, is not the first political jurisdiction to suggest that maybe Daddy doesn’t know best.

Now, I have often joked about not beating my kids enough–almost always with my kids in hearing distance–but I personally never saw a reason to actually strike them. I remember being struck by my own dad many times (probably more than he actually did), and not with fond memories, and resisted creating those same memories for my kids. But I would not have surrendered my right to do so. I certainly wouldn’t have handed power to the state to develop the bureaucratic machinery necessary to distinguish, say, a pat on a youngster’s butt, or aggressive handling of a child in need of reminding who is in charge, versus illegal “striking.”

It takes a certain mindset to presume that the government can effectively make these distinctions. One such genius is Sally Lieber. As is typical of the kind of blindly liberal buttinsky that regularly gets elected in California, she proposed a bill to ban spanking, i.e., expanding government’s reach into the family room, without actually having raised any children herself.

“Responsible parents have to give up the privilege to physically discipline their children for the sake of protecting children that aren’t being hit once in a blue moon or in a light way.”

I think the same line of reasoning should apply to severely curtailing state power on account of those who would exercise it irresponsibly.