From Ezra:

A Liberal senator proposes to criminalize spanking in Canada.

Celine Hervieux-Payette has introduced bill S-204 that, if passed into law, would expose parents to assault charges for spanking a child, QMI Agency’s Brian Lilley reports.

She would repeal Criminal Code section 43, which protects parents and teachers “using force by way of correction toward a pupil or child,” as long as that force is “reasonable under the circumstances.”

Anti-spanking radicals challenged that law all the way to the Supreme Court. But in 2004 that court upheld its constitutionality. Child abuse remains criminal, of course, but spanking is fine as long as it is a “genuine effort to educate the child, poses no reasonable risk of harm that is more than transitory and trifling, and is reasonable under the circumstances.”

The Supreme Court of Canada is liberal, especially on social issues. You’ve got to go to the hard left — the anti-parent left, the government-is-your-nanny left — to be further left than they are.

Which Hervieux-Payette certainly is.

She’s the same senator who wants a law forcing Canadian companies to have 50% of their directors be women.

It’s not surprising that someone who thinks the government is a better parent than actual parents are, also thinks the government is better at running businesses than actual businesses are.

So what would Hervieux-Payette’s enlightened Canada look like? Her speech promoting her bill is revealing.

Canadian parents who spank, even in accordance with the Supreme Court’s rule about gentleness, are “violent,” she says.

But she goes much further, and weirder. She claims spanking is “the root cause of the violence in our society.”

Poor Clifford Olson. Poor Paul Bernardo. If only their parents hadn’t spanked them, those two misunderstood boys would have grown up to spend their lives doing yoga and burning incense candles. They’re the true victims, and their parents are the true criminals.

Hervieux-Payette actually cites an animal biologist as an authority that violence is not a natural human tendency — it’s imposed on us by others, like spanking parents. She’s even blames aggressive sports. Oh, how many genocides could have been prevented without spanking or football!

When are these bleeding hearts going to learn that Dr Spock was wrong? In fact, he admitted it himself. The self-esteem-and-feelings method of parenting resulted in directionless kids with no boundaries forever pushing the limits to try to figure out if there was anything mommy and daddy wouldn’t bail them out of.

Perhaps if this Hervieux-Payette woman had been disciplined more as a child, she might have studied something more worthy than “group hugging” and “tampon macrame” at whatever progressive school she went to.

Let parents parent. Let the politicians balance the damn budgets.

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