Spanking is Cowardly
A lot of the anti-spanking comments I've seen revolve around scientific and psychological arguments, such as "Spanking is ineffective" or "Spanking causes brain damage".
This is all true, as countless studies over the past few decades have shown.
But to me, this is just not enough. The amount of anger I experience when I read pro-spanking comments online is impossible to really put into words. It's like an intense rage.
I see people try to approach spankers with compassion and understanding. I see them try and reason with them. As far as I'm concerned, someone who is capable of actually violently attacking a small child is so completely far-gone when it comes to their capacity for empathy and compassion that they're past a point of no return. I've heard of a few abusive parents recanting, apologizing, and changing, but as Molyneux says from his personal experience (and he's had millions of views), he can count them on the fingers of one hand.
This is a multi-generational ideological battle.
There is no rapid solution here, no quick fix. No politician to swoop in and solve our problems. Changing the culture of child abuse prevalent around the entire world is something that will take generations, because once a parent has continued the cycle of abuse, joined the dark side, and abused their own flesh and blood children, admitting they are wrong is simply too much for most anyone to bear.
The way this changes is by affecting their kids, by telling them that their parents were abusive, barbaric, and absolutely, unequivocally, wrong. By helping them get angry at their abusers, and thus ensuring they never repeat those abuses themselves.
I see too much reference to scientific studies with people who have never read a study in their life.
Appeals to compassion with people who are incapable of empathy.
It's like bringing up science in an argument with a religious person. You're just putting your eye to a cheese-grater and hoping something good will come of it. It won't.
Not enough people point out the simple fact that anybody who defends an adult hitting a child much smaller than them is a vile and abusive coward. These people should be shamed for their barbaric violence, not reasoned or empathized with.
How exactly is a compassionate person supposed to empathize with a child-hitting monster? I can't do it, and I don't really know anyone who can.
Remember, at the end of the day, you're not just "agreeing to disagree". At the end of the day, that abusive parent goes home and hits their kids.
Not only are these bullies picking on someone much, much smaller and lighter than them, but they're also deliberately choosing the person in their lives who is utterly dependent on them, can't leave, and didn't even choose them as parents in the first place. What, exactly, is the great big difference between an abusive parent and an abusive kidnapper?
Attempting to reason with people who are emotionally at the developmental stage of a ranting and raving 1 year-old (and I'm being kind of unfair to 1 year-olds here) is futile beyond measure. Focus on their kids, whether they're old enough to leave or simply as a way of de-normalizing an abusive situation that they're still in.
99.9% of the time, there's no hope for the parents, but some of the time – a lot of the time, their kids will become better and break the cycle of abuse.
In the mean time, seeing people advocate for violent crimes against children in comments to videos and articles around the internet, while police are busy chasing down pedophiles, is just another window into the moral insanity of this so-called "civilized" society.