Lords disdain to spare the rod

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The House of Lords has rejected a ban on spanking. Like other “social issues” the question of legitimate parental chastisement provides food for thought, and in fact leads very quickly to basic issues.

The arguments in favor of the ban are that “[s]macking can lead to battering which can lead to death,” and “children must have the same legal protection from being hit as adults.” The first is the line of thought that says that “right to carry” laws mean shootouts over fender benders. The basic point is that formal public order is the only legitimate and reliable kind of social order, and everything else is a mixture of prejudice and stereotyping that can’t be counted on and on the whole makes things worse and should be rooted out. You just can’t trust people to do anything sensible on their own without supervision, and the people can’t supervise themselves. On that view, informal use of force is the same as uncontrolled private violence and should be strictly forbidden.

The second argument is that what’s valuable to children is not family care and discipline, backed when needed by the immediate rewards and sanctions that work in the setting, but equal citizenship in a formal legal order that—once again—is viewed as the only kind of social order that’s legitimate. The basic idea seems to be that realization of our humanity does not depend at all, even for children, on participation in a concrete society that involves the irregularities of specific human connections. Those irregularities always involve inequality and are just another name for oppression. Rather, our human dignity and worth depends solely on the sovereignty of the ego limited only by the equal sovereignty of other egos. Social arrangements—like the particular authority of parents—that don’t comply with the equal sovereignty of egos have to go, at least in connection with anything that begins to matter.

The Guardian comments that the vote put Britain “out of step on the issue with several European countries [meaning a few of the smaller Germanic countries] where all physical punishment of children is illegal” and which are notorious for their busybodies. It’s odd they don’t mention that it kept Britain in step with the much more numerous and populous contries that don’t have such laws. No doubt an oversight.

25 thoughts on “Lords disdain to spare the rod”

  1. Just like in Canada
    I can’t remember when it was, but I believe Turnabout noted, and I commented, when similar legislation was rejected in Canada, a while back – but the anti-spanking crowd still gained some ground, just as in the U.K. according to this article: “Instead, they voted by 226-91 to allow moderate spanking, but make it easier to prosecute parents who physically or mentally abuse their children by spanking.”

    Something similar, I forget the details, happened here. This is no victory, but another moving of the goalposts, once again… Eventually the anti-spanking forces will prevail, in Canada and the U.K., as in Sweden and elsewhere…

    Will S.

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    • Behold the remnant left by the departure of all the Vikings
      Will S. writes,

      “as in Sweden and elsewhere…”

      Ahhh, Sweden, yes … that nation of Eloi …

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        • Sweden and Canada
          I think the point has arrived in both of these countries where they can only be desribed as totalitarian regimes. Election by a plurality of voters does not equal legitimate governmnent in and of itself. After all, Hitler won the election in 1933. Was the Nazi regime thus legitimate?

          Therefore, any remnant of genuinely patriotic Swedes and Canadians should henceforth regard their governments as illegitimate, and laws (such as gun control) issued therefrom as likewise illegitimate. Acts of war to overthrow these governments should be regarded as morally justifiable, within the constraints of just war. The temporal rulers of these nations are now using the brute force of the state to violate the practice of true faith and the spread of the gospel. They have crossed the line and are no longer under Divine protection as rulers due to their fundamental lawlessness.

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          • yes
            Was the Nazi regime thus legitimate?

            Yes, according to the philosophical tenets of democracy. When the mass of the electorate decide something, then the decision is legitimate. So when the mass of the people in Turkey democratically choose a non-democratic Islamic government, the decision is legitimate. The demos rules in a democracy, whatever they choose.

          • I follow ypur logic, but….
            Yes, Generalissimo, I see the logic of your argument. Would you then argue that since the Nazis were legitimately elected by a plurality of the German electorate, that their “final solution” to the “Jewish problem” was therefore tacitly approved by the majority and thus a legitimate action?

            Surely you would agree that only people who were utterly divorced from the entire moral tradition of Western civilization would take such a view. By “legitimate”, I meant morally legitimate – not legitimate according to the strict philosophcal tenets of democracy as you describe. That idea elevates democracy or collective majority will to the status of God.

          • I agree in part, but…
            Yes, I’m inclined to view my nation’s (Canada’s) government as morally illegitimate, while nevertheless I remain loyal to Canada’s Head of State (Her Majesty QEII) – after all, Her Majesty rules By the Grace of God (rather than by the will of the people, who can be stupid and wrong). But who, other than Her Majesty, outside of our borders, has the moral authority to remove our rulers? On what grounds? Is there a nation, or collectivity of nations, which is the specific instrument of God’s Will on Earth, empowered with the moral authority to take such decisions on itself? I remain fascinated at how many Americans view their government as a righteous judge of nations, and how many people elsewhere view other entities – esp. the U.N. – similarly. I see no grounds for either faith. You rightly note, in response to “Franco”, that accepting actions of a government as legitimate, solely on whether they conform to the principles of democracy or collective will, and not considering their morality, ends up elevating democracy or collective majority will to the status of God. I humbly submit that no single nation – not the U.S. or any other nation – nor any collectivity of nations – e.g. the U.N. – has the moral authority to stand in judgment of other nations – especially governments which don’t officially “bend the knee” to Christ, which, for all their faults, monarchies like Canada and Sweden at least officially still do. God will judge the nations, in His time.

          • Thoughtful Response
            That was a very thoughtful response from MS about the moral legitimacy of governments. I would like to pose a couple of questions/comments to MS:

            1. You make the statement that Canada and Sweden officially “bend the knee” to Christ. I would submit that, in light of their official actions – to persecute the church for preaching the the Holy Scriptures and the Gospel – that they in fact do not bend the knee at all. Far worse, they are willing to use force of arms (state power) to surpress those who preach the Scriptures. (Pastor Green in Sweden being a perfect example.) At the same time, they are promoting the spread of false religions – liberalism and Islam – whose goal is the complete annihilation of Christianity. I would futher argue that such governments are thus anathema and should be undermined and destroyed for their refusal to repent, within the constraints of just war. Her Majesty has effectively excommunicated herself. Her subjects thus no longer owe her their loyality inasmuch as her government now seeks to destroy Christianity.

            2. I do not assert that the United States has the moral authority to despose the degenerate and evil regimes of Canada and Sweden. We have our own issues to deal with, though I think thar believers can still work within the system to advance the cause of Christ, despite the efforts of leftists withing our borders to destroy everything.

          • Fair enough…
            Given our monarchical form of government, we have the bizarre situation wherein the State officially recognizes God (our coins bear the Queen’s head, and the inscription “D.G. Regina” – Dei Gratia Regina – Queen by the Grace of God), yet the governments are actually in opposition to God, and Godly principles, today. Admittedly, the Queen has shown herself to be a moral relativist, too; in recent years, her annual Christmas messages (about the only address she makes regularly to all her subjects) have talked about the underlying unity of all religions, blah blah blah. But for now, she remains far more orthodox than the Canadian government.

            We are in agreement, then, that the U.S. doesn’t have (and presumably no other regime has) the legitimacy to overthrow the regimes of Canada and Sweden, given its own issues. So are you merely encouraging the Christians in our countries to overthrow the anti-Christian regimes that govern us? I certainly am rather sympathetic to that view, to a fair degree… I wonder, though, what would be the most practical manner to accomplish this.

            Will S.

          • Certain E.U. voices shamed the Appeals Court into doing justice
            For that favorable decision by the Appeals Court we have Europeans like Vladimir Palko and Paul Belien to thank, I am convinced. These two men and others like them spoke out when the rest—far too many, in fact—remained eerily silent.

            And as for Americans:

            “No American conservative had the courage of Vladimir Palko.”
            ________________________

            Long live Flanders!

        • Swedish women get “same pattern” of treatment as under Taliban?
          Talk about “out of touch”—did everyone see further down in that last article cited by Will S. (today, 2:42am)? It says,

          “Sweden already has the highest taxes in the European Union as a percentage of gross domestic product to pay for its famous but hard-pressed cradle-to-grave welfare program. It is also one of the world’s most advanced nations in terms of gender equality, but [Left Party deputy Gudrun] Schyman said in a headline-grabbing 2002 speech that discrimination in Sweden followed ‘the same pattern’ as in Afghanistan under the Taliban.”

          OK, OK … I admit she didn’t actually say life for women in Sweden was the same as life for women under the Taliban, only that “discrimination [against women] in Sweden followed the same pattern as in Afghanistan under the Taliban.” But still—what are the odds that someone making that comment is in touch with reality? Hey I could be wrong, but—I don’t think they’re too good, frankly…

          (BTW, they have something called “The Left Party” in Sweden? Hey at least that cuts right through all the obfuscation and tells you exactly what you’re getting when you vote for them… unlike some parties over here I could mention…)
          ________________________

          “If a tree falls and an expert doesn’t hear it, is there a sound?” Yes, the sweetest, most melodious sound in all creation: the sound of entropy being brought clanking, screeching, grinding to a halt.

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          • In Sweden, Grape Kool-Aid is the National Drink
            I’m nearly speechless at the level of absurdity in Sweden. The best thing that could happen would be for the Muslims to take over an impose Sharia – especially upon the feminist and leftist nutcases running things now. They deserve nothing less.

            The choice for any genuinely patriotic Swedes remaining is a difficult one – persecution by the Tranzi/Leftist gang in charge now (which will result in theor extermination) or Dhimmitude under the Muslims. At this point, Dhimmitude would appear to offer a better chance of survival. What a horrible time it must be there for Ake Green and his flock. My prayers for their survival.

          • Swedish feminists set to break Left / SocDem/ Green coalition
            Remember http://web.archive.org/web/20041010011447/http://xtramsn.co.nz/money/0,,5488-3748954,00.html Gudrun Schyman? Formerly of the Left Party, now she appears to be heading up a “Feminist Initiative” party that http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=627349&host=3&dir=73 threatens to unseat the current PM…

            The potential good news is, this splintering of the Swedish Left from three ways (Left Party, Green Party, Social Democratic Party) into four ways (now the additional Feminist Initiative) may open the way up for a return to power of the Centre-Right four-party coalition, the so-called “bourgeois bloc”…

            These self-destructive tendencies (splintering; failure to reproduce) of the left might be encouraging, if it weren’t for the displacement of Western countries’ populations by aliens, via unbridled mass Third World Asian and Muslim immigration…

        • The new non-white dispensation in Sweden
          Lawrence Auster on race relations and identity, in Sweden, here.

          Sadly, though, I think that the rapper cited is correct, or is becoming so, about the old Sweden being something that “no longer exists”. After all, as liberalism and very high levels of immigration change the nature of the country, statements like his, become self-fulfilling prophecies.

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        • Meanings of “Eloi” and “Tranzi”
          André, Eloi is the name English author H. G. Wells (who flourished around the beginning of the last century) invented for the people inhabiting the world of the future in his science-fiction novel, “The Time Machine.” I haven’t read the novel but the Hollywood movie version from the early 60s, starring Rod Taylor and Yvette Mimieux, vividly portrays the Eloi as attractive blonde weak-willed soulless young men and women who neither love nor hate, and who lack all passion, intensity, conviction, sense of right and wrong, and respect for what’s important, like books, let alone for what’s sacred, like human life. In the film, for example, they hear cries of a drowning woman yet don’t come to her aid because they literally don’t care about anything. Need one point out that post-modern Western society seems to mold people to have certain Eloi-like traits?
          ______

          As to the meaning of “Tranzi,” the following excerpt from this article explains “Tranzism,” or “Transnational Progressivism”:

          The key concepts of transnational progressivism could be described as follows:

          The ascribed group over the individual citizen. The key political unit is not the individual citizen, who forms voluntary associations and works with fellow citizens regardless of race, sex, or national origin, but the ascriptive group (racial, ethnic, or gender) into which one is born.

          A dichotomy of groups: Oppressor vs. victim groups, with immigrant groups designated as victims. Transnational ideologists have incorporated the essentially Hegelian Marxist “privileged vs. marginalized” dichotomy.

          Group proportionalism as the goal of “fairness.” Transnational progressivism assumes that “victim” groups should be represented in all professions roughly proportionate to their percentage of the population. If not, there is a problem of “underrepresentation.”

          The values of all dominant institutions to be changed to reflect the perspectives of the victim groups. Transnational progressives insist that it is not enough to have proportional representation of minorities in major institutions if these institutions continue to reflect the worldview of the “dominant” culture. Instead, the distinct worldviews of ethnic, gender, and linguistic minorities must be represented within these institutions.

          The “demographic imperative.” The demographic imperative tells us that major demographic changes are occurring in the U. S. as millions of new immigrants from non-Western cultures enter American life. The traditional paradigm based on the assimilation of immigrants into an existing American civic culture is obsolete and must be changed to a framework that promotes “diversity,” defined as group proportionalism.

          The redefinition of democracy and “democratic ideals.” Transnational progressives have been altering the definition of “democracy” from that of a system of majority rule among equal citizens to one of power sharing among ethnic groups composed of both citizens and non-citizens. James Banks, one of American education’s leading textbook writers, noted in 1994 that “to create an authentic democratic Unum with moral authority and perceived legitimacy, the pluribus (diverse peoples) must negotiate and share power.” Hence, American democracy is not authentic; real democracy will come when the different “peoples” that live within America “share power” as groups.

          Deconstruction of national narratives and national symbols of democratic nation-states in the West. In October 2000, a UK government report denounced the concept of “Britishness” and declared that British history needed to be “revised, rethought, or jettisoned.” In the U.S., the proposed “National History Standards,” recommended altering the traditional historical narrative. Instead of emphasizing the story of European settlers, American civilization would be redefined as a multicultural “convergence” of three civilizations—Amerindian, West African, and European. In Israel, a “post-Zionist” intelligentsia has proposed that Israel consider itself multicultural and deconstruct its identity as a Jewish state. Even Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres sounded the post-Zionist trumpet in his 1993 book , in which he deemphasized “sovereignty” and called for regional “elected central bodies,” a type of Middle Eastern EU.

          Promotion of the concept of postnational citizenship. In an important academic paper, Rutgers Law Professor Linda Bosniak asks hopefully “Can advocates of postnational citizenship ultimately succeed in decoupling the concept of citizenship from the nation-state in prevailing political thought?”

          The idea of transnationalism as a major conceptual tool. Transnationalism is the next stage of multicultural ideology. Like multiculturalism, transnationalism is a concept that provides elites with both an empirical tool (a plausible analysis of what is) and an ideological framework (a vision of what should be). Transnational advocates argue that globalization requires some form of “global governance” because they believe that the nation-state and the idea of national citizenship are ill suited to deal with the global problems of the future.
          _____

          As can be seen, President Bush and his father are Tranzis. It’s clear in retrospect that when his father used to refer to “The New World Order”—a term no one ever asked him to define while he served as president—he meant Tranzism: no more countries, no more cultures, no more nations, no more diversity in the world, no more distinctness, all of that to be rooted out of every nook and cranny where it might try to hide, the goal of course being universal enslavement to a hellish one-world alliance between godless radical left-wing totalitarian social-policy dictatorship on the one hand, and on the other, godless, lawless crony-capitalist meat-grinder Wall-Street-worshipping rational markets and inhuman bureaucracies so alienating and devoid of meaning they make the most frightening alienation nightmares ever imagined by Franz Kafka look like the Hollywood movie “It’s A Wonderful Life.”
          ________________________

          “If a tree falls and an expert doesn’t hear it, is there a sound?” Yes, the sweetest, most melodious sound in all creation: the sound of entropy being brought clanking, screeching, grinding to a halt.

          Reply

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