As IF Times

link Spanking Linked to Kids’ Later Aggression.

I would hazard a guess to say that the authors of this now widely circulated study never had bratty kids.  Or plenty of cotton for their ears.  Or have annoyed countless other people in grocery stores, shopping malls and amusement parks with their kids wailing like police sirens.  Like global warming, it’s a stretch to assume that just because something happens to come under current study,  that a profound revelation has emerged after centuries of human existence.

In the case of child rearing, how did generations of people spanning all cultures from all over the world  manage to survive all this time if they reared kids who became aggressive bullies?  That explains the commentators on MSNBC, but for the mass of the world’s population, for whom corporal punishment of their children is the norm, this argument  just doesn’t hold water.  In an ideal world, you would tell the rotten kids to ixnay the bad behaviour and they would stop and if you’re lucky, that’s the end of it.  But sometimes, they are so rotten, only 5 fingers across the butt will get their attention.

Of course that’s not to say that the parents of Mao Tse Tung or Adolf  Hitler or Pol Pot didn’t beat them as kids, I’m sure they must have deserved it at some time.  I think it’s more likely that these people were enabled in their bullying careers.  For people like Hitler to come to influence you need a Chamberlain who enables him.

Heck, I think it’s borderline abuse NOT to spank kids.  Even at a young age, their thought processes develop quickly.  If you disassociate bad behavior from pain, you may be programming them to think that way their entire lives.  There’s a reason pain receptors exist.  It’s amazing how few kids put their hands in fire when burned once.  If they suffer no pain for bad behaviour and only tsk tsks, they will be  programmed to game the system once they enter real life.  Without hard consequences, kids will treat life as a video game where they can crash all they want and start a new game.  A smack on the behind is precisely what is needed to snap some kids out of their self indulgent and bad behaviour.  When you talk about bullying at the kid level, I think we can accept the notion that some are born naturally more aggressive than others.  In the schoolyard environment, some are going to want to impose their influence on others as a precursor to their future law careers. 

If children are only given soft punishments such as time outs, it will be accepted as a minor nuisance and in the future, they will plot ways to get around the punishment.  Even worse, they will create arguments as to why they should not get “punished” and so begins their life of rationalization and excuse making.  Punishment for kids should be corporal and it should not be negotiable.  I’d  bet that the fear or dread of physical pain translates into positive  law abiding behavior in adult life and not the opposite as suggested by these studies.  Lashes on the butt are much more effective than those with the tongue.

Like most of the world, they will learn an important lesson.  Life is not always fair and if you screw up, you will suffer pain.  Besides, as the saying goes, it always hurts the parents more anyway.

link Obama gives dire warning at start of nuclear summit – latimes.com.

I am reminded of the famous courtroom scene in the movie, A Few Good Men starring Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson.  In the scene, the dialogue goes something like this:

Cruise:  ” Would you say this placed Private Santiago in danger?”

Nicholson: ” Yes”

Cruise: “Grave danger?”

Nicholson: “Is there any other kind?”

Since Obama has come into office, has anyone noticed that any issue that he addresses will have dire consequences if not immediately acted upon?  There appears to be a stock speech about how awful things are but not as bad as they will become if, “we don’t act decisively”, or the other chestnut, “act swiftly”.   We’ve heard this pattern of rhetorical cliches as applied to the TARP  scheme, to the stimulus package, to healthcare, to global warming, and now to nuclear proliferation.  It gets old and if his credibility has not been spent with the first 1 or 2 dire warnings, its currency is much deflated now. 

None of this would be as galling if it weren’t for the fact that all of the solutions offered are wrong and in direct contrast to his stated rhetoric.  People who keep track of these things may notice that there has no been no bipartisan support for any of his policies, there has been no transparency in policy drafts,  a conspicuous disregard for public opinion and worst of all,  the ratcheting up of government debt and influence upon Americans.  The invoking of the “dire consequences” clause should not be an excuse to implement any old policy that happens to fall into an ideological agenda.  It’s as if he thinks that wrapping everything in an apocalyptic theme will alarm people enough to support his policy directions.  I can’t recall any other president in recent history with as much pessimism as this guy.

I wonder if the hyperbole is something they teach in Harvard law school or is part of his natural character to over dramatize everything.  For instance, I wonder if he has invoked the dire consequences line to his girls when they are reluctant to go to bed.  “Let me be clear, you must act swiftly and go to bed or there will be dire consequences”.  What is interesting about the whole scenario is that the president has NO HISTORY of being able to navigate out of any mess much less those with dire consequences.  There is no track record of any success in building or turning around any venture.  It can be said however that he has a particular familiarity and expertise in using public funds to build a bureaucracy.  Talk about your dire consequences.