Ep. 417 - Fighting The Coronavirus With Diversity And Tolerance
As the gap between parody and reality narrows more and more each day, CNN complains that Trump's coronavirus task force lacks diversity. Also, a billionaire is donating millions to fight the disease and Gizmodo has found a reason to complain about that. Plus, we talk about an Orwellian brainwashing session at a pre-school in New York. And we continue the debate over spanking.
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So you know how I always say, many conservatives always say, that the left is beyond parody at this point?
Well, that's not a mere platitude or a slogan.
There is a deep and terrifying truth here, and the truth is that they actually are beyond parody.
As in, it's becoming impossible to satirize them, because satire requires that you take the idea you're satirizing and you bring it to an absurd conclusion so as to highlight the flaws within the logic that you're trying to make a satire of.
But if the idea that is being proposed to begin with
has already been brought to its most absurd conclusion, then what can you do?
All you can do to satirize it is to point to it and say, look, and that's what satire is increasingly becoming.
Case in point, CNN.
I suppose I could just stop right there, but let's, let me give you a specific example.
Here's a headline of a real article on CNN.com right now.
This is real, I assure you.
Written by a certified genius named Brandon Tensley.
Headline, Coronavirus Task Force, Another Example of Trump Administration's Lack of Diversity.
No, it gets better, I assure you.
The expectations set by that headline are fulfilled within the text of the article.
Let me read it to you.
It says, it's a statement that's as predictable as it is infuriating.
President Donald Trump's administration lacks diversity.
On Tuesday, Trump tweeted photos of a briefing he'd received on the new coronavirus spreading out of China.
The president said in his post, we will continue to monitor the ongoing developments.
We have the best experts anywhere in the world and they are on top of this 24-7.
Who are these experts?
They're largely the same sort of white men, and a couple women on the sidelines, who've dominated the Trump administration from the very beginning.
By contrast, former President Barack Obama's circle of advisors, in the face of 2014's Ebola outbreak in West Africa, was hardly so monochromatic.
Neither was it so abysmal in terms of gender diversity.
Of course, to contextualize, Obama's administration, on the whole, was far more diverse than Trump's.
And yet, as unsurprising as the diversity issue in the Trump era has become, it's still worth pointing out from time to time, especially as the country approaches the 2020 presidential election in earnest.
That's partly because the recent photos of the best experts telegraph the kinds of people the administration deems worthy of holding power, and even being in close proximity to it.
They communicate a patronage network that everyone is operating under, as Eric Yellen, an associate professor of blah blah blah, okay.
But the visuals have come to define the Trump administration, and they say something else too.
They signal which people in a multiracial, half-female country Trump values the opinions of.
Mostly white men, who are mirror images of the president himself.
Now look, the easy thing to do here, would be to show you the page on CNN's own website with photos of their anchors and their correspondents.
And you would see, if you look at this page, that, jeez, I mean, that's a lot of whiteness right there.
Wow.
Look at this.
Just white, white, white, white, white.
I need sunglasses looking at this.
It's so much whiteness.
I haven't seen so many white people since I went to a clearance sale at HomeGoods.
Or, you know, in fact, I haven't seen this much whiteness since I watched the Democratic debates.
This is just a lot of whiteness.
So we could do that and point out that CNN is not holding itself to its own standard, but that wouldn't be fair.
It's not fair, because it's not fair to hold them to their own standards.
Totally unfair.
They get a special standard, you see.
We all have one standard, and they're special.
They have a different one.
All right?
That's just the way it is.
It's the way it is, and it's the way it should be, for some reason.
I can't explain why, but it is.
What I really want to say is, all joking aside, because this is a serious issue, and we shouldn't joke about it.
So, completely, sincerely, my first reaction, yeah, is to mock and laugh at this article.
But I think you should resist that urge.
We all should.
And we should try to listen to what this man is saying.
Because he's actually right.
The whole point of a task force, of this task force, is to help monitor and contain this disease and to stop it from spreading here.
But let me ask you this.
Do you really want, and you have to think about this, do you really want a bunch of cisgendered white men to protect you from a deadly virus?
Sure.
If they're successful, the positive is that you don't die a horrible death, leaving your children orphaned and your spouse destitute.
That's the positive.
But does that even come close to compensating for the lack of diversity?
Is it worth the cost, is what I'm trying to ask you.
You continuing to live and not get a deadly disease, is that worth the cost of the lack of diversity?
That's quite an ethical dilemma, you have to admit.
Personally, here's my thing.
I'm in agreement with CNN on this.
When you're dealing with a potential pandemic, the key is to make sure that the people combating it, the people that are tasked with containing it, are adequately representative of every demographic.
So, if it were me, As someone who is not a bigot, I'm gonna have a task force with, of course, black people, Latinos, women, lesbians, pansexuals, transgenders, probably I'll throw a couple Asians in there, bisexual Asians, just to be safe.
If a white person makes it on the team, they damn well better be drag queens, at a minimum.
What about a gay white man?
Sorry, not progressive enough.
You're going to need to do a lot better than that.
Now, you want to talk about a disabled gay white man?
Okay, maybe now you're talking.
What if these people, though, don't have expertise in containing deadly viruses?
What if there are other people who would have more expertise and perhaps would be better suited for the job?
Doesn't matter, because that's not the point.
The point always is to promote diversity in every situation, no matter what.
And that way, my diverse, progressive, tolerant task force, if it fails to contain the virus, because none of them have any relevant expertise or any relevant experience in the field of epidemiology, well then, as you're lying there dying, you at least will have the peace of mind of knowing that there are no straight white males on the coronavirus task force.
And you know something?
I think that will Bring you a lot of peace and comfort in your final moments.
So, thank you to CNN for that.
Really, really wonderful, wonderful stuff.
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All right, here's some more unintentional satire because these are fun.
Article from Gizmodo.
Billionaire Jack Ma has donated $14 million to develop a coronavirus vaccine, roughly the equivalent of an average U.S.
family donating $33.
The article from Matt Novak reads in part, tech billionaire Jack Ma has donated $14.5 million to help develop a vaccine for the coronavirus.
Ma is China's wealthiest person with an estimated $41 billion, which means that his donation is roughly equivalent to the average American household donating 33 bucks.
Ma founded Alibaba, the world's largest online retailer, and is often compared to Amazon.
Alibaba and Amazon both treat their employees like S, like crap, Their owners both own major media outlets.
Bezos, who's worth an estimated $117 billion, recently donated $690,000 to help Australia battle its bushfires.
That bastard.
The equivalent of an average American donating less than a dollar.
How generous, coming from a guy who says he doesn't know how to spend his money.
Bezos and Ma would get along just swimmingly.
It's good when extremely wealthy people give their money to worthy causes, but you know what's great?
Taking that obscene wealth through taxes and spending it to make the world a healthier place for everyone.
Yet again.
Yet again, we have an article here.
This is a leftist expressing their actual point of view.
But if you were to take this article, headline everything, and put it on the Babylon Bee, it wouldn't seem out of place at all.
You could take this article verbatim and put it on a satire site.
And everybody would have a nice laugh.
The only reason I'm acknowledging this particular tripe is that this is a common attitude these days.
This thing where a billionaire gives a million dollars or gives millions of dollars to a cause and then people go, well that's like if I gave 15 cents!
Except it's not.
Okay?
14 million dollars to fight a disease is the equivalent of 14 million dollars to fight a disease.
The money isn't suddenly worth less because it comes from a rich guy.
That's not how it works.
$14,000,000 is $14,000,000 is $14,000,000.
This is like if I was starving and a guy pulled up with a truck full of sandwiches, with 600 sandwiches, and he gave me one sandwich so I didn't starve, and then I say, hey, you giving me one sandwich is like a guy with two sandwiches giving me three crumbs.
And I throw it back in his face and starve to death in protest.
No, see, the nutritional value of the sandwich doesn't fluctuate depending on the relative sandwich wealth of the person who hands it to you.
The sandwich is the sandwich.
By the way, did the author of this article, he says it's like a normal person donating 33 bucks.
Okay, well, did you, as the author of the article, did you donate 33 bucks?
Because if he didn't, then Jack Ma is still more generous, even by his bizarre math.
I can tell you that, and I will admit, I don't know about you, I have donated $0.0 to developing a coronavirus vaccine.
I have given no money to that effort.
I have not contributed to that effort at all.
I haven't done anything for it, personally.
I'm ashamed to admit.
So, Anything that a billionaire does is going to be infinitely more than I have done, because I've done nothing.
And I think that's probably true of the guy who wrote this article.
It's probably true of almost all of us.
Almost everybody watching right now, or listening.
I bet you have done almost nothing with respect to the coronavirus.
That's the thing about these people who try to dismiss the charitable endeavors of billionaires.
They say, yeah, him giving $600 million is like me giving three quarters in a T.G.
Maxx gift card.
Making up these arbitrary equivalencies.
But these people doing that, how many of them are actually giving any money to any charitable causes at all?
I mean, even $33 or $10 or $5.
even $33 or $10 or $5.
I bet many of them are giving zero, none.
I'm betting you they sit there, arms crossed, rolling their eyes at people who are helping while doing nothing.
Not just sitting there, but they're doing less than nothing.
Because they're sitting there criticizing those who are helping while they don't contribute at all.
They're like somebody sitting down at a construction site, eating a candy bar, Watching men lug heavy things around and saying, that's easy for them.
Look how big they are.
That's easy to pick up heavy stuff.
While they lift nothing, do nothing, contribute nothing of value whatsoever.
I think that's probably what happens.
But what is this all in service to?
It's all in service to insisting on, as they say at the end of the article, take the money through taxes.
They say their position is we need the government to take control, take the money, because we can't trust these people to be charitable with their own money.
And then when they are charitable with their money, because that interferes with the narrative, now we're gonna say, well, yeah, they were charitable, but it doesn't really mean anything because X, Y, Z. It's extremely pathetic.
But I will anxiously await Matt Novak, the author of that article.
I'll be anxiously awaiting to hear how much you have donated, personally, to develop a coronavirus vaccine.
All right.
What else do we have here?
One other article or subject to tackle before we get to emails.
And I want to leave some time for emails because we were talking about the issue of Corporal punishment, spanking, during the email portion of the show, and then I was getting into it on social media, which is always a good use of time arguing about complex, important issues on social media.
Anyway, got a lot of emails about that, and so I want to get back into that subject.
But first, this reading from an article in the New York Post by Andrea Pizer, entitled, Far-Left Agitprop for Pre-K Tots, What NYC Schools Have Come To.
I'm not going to read much of this, but just to give you the gist.
In an email to parents and caregivers on January 16th, teacher Rosie Clark lays out lessons based on the Black Lives Matter Week of Action for a pre-kindergarten class at PS58, located in the well-regarded District 15 in Carroll Gardens.
This from Teacher Clark writes, this year, who is white by the way, this year of the week, February 3rd through 7th, we're starting to talk about these ideas now as we approach Martin Luther King Jr.
Day, which was January 20th, and as we prepare to go into February, Black History Month.
I am lucky enough to work at this wonderful school where we strive to help our students understand the complex world around them and think critically about how they can participate in improving it.
One of the ways I do that in my classroom is by exploring the 13 principles of the Movement for Black Lives.
So this is a white preschool teacher who is teaching her preschool students.
So preschool, you're talking like four years old.
Teaching a bunch of four-year-olds the 13 principles of Black Lives Matter.
Because this is what we want our preschool teachers to be doing, right?
The author of the article continues, some of the 13 points are unobjectionable, preaching diversity plus acceptance and empathy to children who, the dad argues, naturally love their neighbors.
This, by the way, is coming from a dad who alerted the author of the article that this was going on.
Then there's principle six.
Transgender affirming.
Everybody has the right to choose their own gender by listening to their own heart and mind.
Everyone gets to choose if they're a boy or a girl, or both, or neither, or something else.
And no one gets to choose for them.
Then number seven, queer affirming.
The principle here is that everybody has the right to choose who they love and the kind of family they want by listening to their own heart and mind.
And then there's number twelve, black women.
The teacher writes, there are some people who think that women are less important than men.
We know that all people are important and have the right to be safe and talk about their feelings.
Now, who are these people who think that women are less important than men?
I don't know.
But this is what we're telling preschoolers.
Okay.
There's more to this article.
You can go to nypost.com and read it.
It's worth the read.
Of course, I'm mainly zeroing in on principle number six, transgender affirming.
Everybody has the right to choose their own gender by listening to their own heart and mind.
Everyone gets to choose if they're a boy or a girl or both or neither or something else and no one gets to choose for them.
Now, I talk a lot about how left-wing gender theory is inherently nonsensical and impossible to explain or defend.
And I've speculated that most people who believe, or who pretend to believe this, who espouse it, don't really believe it.
And most of the people who pretend to believe the ones that are espousing it, don't themselves actually believe it.
And I base this on the fact that ten years ago, almost nobody thought that a dude could really be a woman, magically, if he feels like one.
Almost nobody thought that ten years ago.
Ten years ago, and any time prior, almost nobody was advocating for men to be allowed in the women's locker room, or to be allowed on the women's track team, and so on.
And then, almost overnight, there's this shift.
And it... I really doubt...
That all of these people who had lived their lives up to that point, believing that biological sex exists, it seems unlikely to me that they, overnight, could have really, authentically, sincerely changed their minds.
So I don't think that really happened.
I think that they're pretending.
But, here's the other part of this.
Because the left knows that they can't defend their position.
They know that most sane adults don't believe it, never will.
They know that if they asked almost any adult whether a dude should be able to play on a girls basketball team, and if that adult was able to be honest, felt safe, and felt that they could answer honestly without facing some sort of repercussion, almost any adult would say no, they shouldn't be allowed to.
And that's why they're focusing on children.
Leftists play the long game.
They've always played the long game.
They've never been overly concerned with a short-term situation, to their credit.
They're looking at this from a generational perspective.
That's why they win.
That's why they've won the culture.
Because they're looking generations down the line.
And they know that if they can get to the kids, if they can convince the kids, it's not going to matter what you think or what I think.
It's irrelevant.
Who cares about us?
Get to the kids.
Recruit the kids.
Brainwash them.
And then you have the culture.
You have everything.
And the good thing for them, for the left-wing brainwashers, is that kids, especially preschool-age kids, can be convinced of literally anything.
So I say convince the kids.
That's really easy.
You know what's involved in convincing a four-year-old of something?
Tell them.
Whatever you want to convince them of, tell them, and that's it.
They're convinced.
That's all you have to do.
Because four-year-olds lack the cognitive tools to discern truth from fiction, plausibility from implausibility, reality from fantasy.
They can't do that.
All that a child at that age can do is rely on the word of the adults in his life.
That's the most rational thing for him to do because he doesn't know anything about the world, and so he's going to rely on the adults around him.
He has to do that.
Because they're not going to understand the whys of things.
The other day, I caught my three-year-old trying to put his finger in a power outlet.
And, of course, I stopped him, and I was very stern with him, and I explained to him that he can't touch it because he'll get very, very hurt.
But, of course, he had no idea what I was talking about.
Electricity, shock, death, injury.
What does any of that mean to a three-year-old?
It doesn't.
Doesn't mean anything to him.
He just, he has my word and that has to be enough.
And to him, there's no difference between one incomprehensible claim that an adult might make and any other.
So if, you know, he'll take my word for it on the outlet thing.
If I were to tell him, don't walk on the grass because a dragon will come out of the ground and eat you, he'd believe that too.
He'd believe it just like he believed the outlet story.
To him, they're exactly the same.
He doesn't see a difference.
He can't measure plausibility versus implausibility.
So, if you get to them, the left knows this, convince them, then it doesn't matter.
Then you don't have to define it.
You don't have to defend it or define your terms.
I'm always talking about, can you define the word woman, and how that is a pretty conclusive counter-argument to all of this gender madness.
And it is.
But what the left is saying is, who cares?
Yeah, we can't defend it.
We don't need to.
Because we're going to get your kids.
And here's the other part of this.
Many of us, I think, still don't understand this about ourselves.
The thing is, when you get to a kid, and you tell a kid something, they're going to believe it, but they're going to continue believing it.
In perpetuity.
Unless you tell them otherwise, or unless they're convinced otherwise by other adults.
You see?
Telling a kid something at that age, it has such a lasting, long-term impact that kids will, all the way into adulthood, could continue believing something that is completely absurd and nonsensical just because they were told it as a kid.
Unless somebody else comes back around and can deprogram.
But if that deprogramming never happens, they're going to live their whole life believing that.
And, you know, that's the truth for a lot of us too.
That what we're taught as a child, whether true or not, whether defensible or not, whether reasonable or not, whatever you're taught will maintain a very strong hold over you well into adulthood and possibly forever.
It is very, very, very hard for an adult to break away from the indoctrination that he experienced as a youth.
Because that stuff gets seared into the brain.
The mind forms around it.
And to extricate it is extremely difficult.
Point being, tell preschoolers that boys are girls, and they'll believe you.
Because you said it.
And they lack the capacity to know the difference.
And then if you keep telling them, most of them will continue believing it.
Just as strongly, you know, at the age of 26 and 36 and 56, as they did when they were six.
Most people go their whole lives basically believing everything they were taught as kids.
Most people, with most things.
Not all.
But if you can convince this young generation of kids, if they can convert them, then the game is over.
Because indoctrinated at that age, even as adults, it's going to be almost impossible at that point to convince them otherwise.
All right, I want to get to emails.
Before we do, we've been talking for the last several weeks about the pro-life issue and how important it obviously is and what the left has been doing To shut down and censor those of us who stand for the pro-life cause.
And we've gone through it ourselves, with people coming after our sponsors and so on.
And we've been telling you about Live Action, which is one of the biggest, most important voices in the pro-life movement.
And they've, in terms of attacks from the left, they get it worse than almost anybody.
And that's why, until January 31st, which is today, a portion of any Daily Wire membership will be donated to live action with promo code LIVEACTION.
And today is your last day to do this.
So if you go right now, you sign up.
Use the promo code LIVEACTION to support awareness and education around the world on this issue.
Join Daily Wire.
Do it right now.
Make your pro-life voice heard.
And at the same time, you're also going to be a member of the Daily Wire.
So it's a win-win for everybody.
Go do that right now.
Well, not right now.
Wait until the show's over and then go do it.
Okay.
Bundles of mail talking about the spanking issue.
mattwalshow at gmail.com.
mattwalshow at gmail.com.
I was going to read a bunch of the emails.
I think I'll just read one that lays out the objection to my arguments pretty well, and I'll respond to those, and that will be the conclusion of this topic for now.
Okay.
This is from Joel.
Says, Hi Matt, I love your show, but totally disagree with your spanking take.
I think to say that those of us who spank our kids are bad parents is very wrong and judgmental.
You say that spanking is, do as I say, not as I do.
But don't you do many things your kids can't do?
You put them in time out, but you wouldn't let them do that.
You take their toys, but you don't let them take from other people.
Also, you say that spanking is hitting.
You call that the dictionary definition.
It's not.
This is the dictionary definition of spanking.
To strike a person, usually a child, with the open hand, etc., especially on the buttocks, as in punishment.
What about shouting?
It's easy to judge parents who spank, but I say shouting is worse, slash abusive.
You can make all the arguments you want, but those of us who spank our children have seen the results.
We know that it's effective.
You're trying to tell us we're wrong about what we ourselves have observed.
It comes off as haughty and arrogant.
I'll still listen to your show, but I'm disappointed in your position on this.
P.S.
How do you reconcile your position with the Bible, which clearly gives parents the authority to spank?
Okay, so let me go through your points here, Joel, and then I'll circle back around and make a few more general points.
First of all, Importantly, I never said that parents who spank are bad parents.
Never said it.
Never implied it.
Never said anything close to that.
Judging by some of my emails, you would think that I said it, but I didn't.
I simply did not say that.
And I don't think it.
Obviously, there are plenty of very good parents who spank.
Clearly.
I have always, through my whole career, I have urged grace and understanding for parents.
I've been very consistent about this.
Because parenting is hard.
I know.
I have four kids.
I get it.
And just because a parent makes a mistake, it doesn't make them bad.
If it did, then I'd be an awful parent because I make mistakes all the time.
Am I saying that spanking is a mistake?
Yes, that's my position.
That's what I believe.
But to say that I think someone's making a mistake as a parent doesn't mean I'm saying that they're bad.
It's two different things, right?
Or at least two things that aren't necessarily, don't necessarily go hand-in-hand.
Second, do as I say, not as I do.
The point here is that we don't want to undermine our authority by exhibiting the very behavior we're trying to curb in our children.
So let's take a less contentious example of this.
I always tell my kids to clean their rooms and to clean up after themselves and to Right?
Be responsible and don't leave stuff laying all over the place.
Like every other parent in the world, I'm telling my kids that all the time.
Well, I am not the neatest person.
I'm pretty disorganized.
My office right now, you can't see it, but there's stuff strewn all over the place.
A little behind the scenes.
And so, my kids, they come into my office and they see what it looks like.
I'm undermining my own authority because they can see that I'm not following my own instructions.
They can see that I must not take what I'm saying very seriously because I don't do it.
So that's something I need to work on.
It doesn't mean that they're excused from cleaning their room.
They still have to do it because that's their responsibility.
And just because one person is not fulfilling their own responsibility doesn't mean it doesn't get you off the hook to fulfill yours.
But I need to do better.
I know that.
And as parents, I think we're all guilty of some do as I say, not as I do things.
Is spanking one of those things?
I think it is, and I'll explain why.
First of all, putting a child in timeout doesn't qualify.
Because, for one thing, I'm not having to constantly tell my kids not to put each other in timeout.
I don't know about you, but that's not the kind of thing that you're constantly having to correct in your children, is it?
Hitting is.
Hitting is a big thing.
You have to get your kids not to hit each other.
Putting each other in timeout doesn't happen very often, but for me, on occasion, actually, it has happened.
And my daughter, who's very maternalistic, and technically the oldest, even though she was a twin, but she was the first to come out, and this is a fact that she's very aware of and makes other people aware of all the time, so she tries to mother the other kids.
On occasion, she's actually tried to put them in timeout, and her brothers have listened to her and actually gone in timeout.
And I tell her, you can't do that.
My reason though, the reason I give, is that she doesn't have the authority to do it.
It's not that putting people in timeout is bad, it's just that it's a matter of authority.
And she doesn't have the authority.
And actually you could even argue that timeout as a concept, I guess as adults we do put ourselves in timeout sometimes, just in the sense of, Okay, I need some space, I need to step back, I need to calm down.
Right?
That's what timeout is.
Sit down, calm down, you need to settle down, that's what timeout is all about.
And as adults, we do kind of do that.
We don't call, we don't say, I'm putting myself in timeout, but it's a similar sort of idea, you could argue.
Taking toys.
Yes, I don't let my kids take other people's toys.
Yet, I do take theirs, as punishment sometimes.
Is that a contradiction?
No.
Because their toys aren't really theirs.
Their toys are mine.
And I've told them that.
I think it's important for them to know.
All of their toys are mine.
And my wife's.
Those toys belong to mommy and daddy.
Those are not your toys.
We graciously are allowing you to play with them.
But we bought them.
We are the ones who, if they're, we buy them.
If they're broken, we fix them.
We pay for them.
We pay for everything.
The house, everything.
So this is all ours.
And because we are nice parents, we let you have toys.
It's your responsibility to take care of them.
This is a privilege you've been given.
We can retract the privilege.
The TV.
You know?
We let you watch TV sometimes.
But that is our TV.
And our couch.
And so, you have to be grateful.
And the idea here is not to have a sense of entitlement.
So, no, I don't take their toys.
I take my own toys back from them.
Which, yeah, they're allowed to do.
If somebody has one of their toys, they're allowed to take it back.
They shouldn't be rude about it, but, yeah, so I don't see that.
Now, spanking is different, and here's the issue.
You spank young children, right?
Assuming you're not spanking a 12-year-old kid, because that would, I hope we all agree, would be really weird and inappropriate.
Most people spank kids like two to six, or thereabouts.
So, you have to think about what they can understand.
That's what's important.
Is there a distinction between a parent spanking a child and a child hitting another child?
Yes, obviously there's a distinction.
But if the child can't see that distinction, then in his mind, when you spank him, you are hitting and you are doing what you say not to do.
And this is going to undermine your authority, not to mention make him feel less safe, less secure, because your rules and your words seem arbitrary to him.
And that's a problem.
So, finding some fine, nuanced distinction between spanking and hitting isn't going to do the job.
The child doesn't see fine nuances.
So here's the question.
Here's what you have to ask.
When you're explaining to your kid why they shouldn't hit, what do you say?
Assuming you don't just give the, because I said so, deal.
Assuming, hopefully, you've given them a reason.
Why they shouldn't do it.
Not because you have to justify yourself to them, but because they should understand why your rules are in place.
You tell them don't run into the road.
If they ask why, of course you're going to tell them, because a car might hit you.
So, if you tell them don't hit, hopefully you give them a reason, so they can understand the rules.
And I don't know what you say.
Here's what I say.
Here's the reason I give.
I say that they should use their words first, and express how they feel with their words, If they're upset or mad or frustrated, use your words.
Communicate.
Oh, but he was mean to me.
I understand he was mean to you.
I'm not saying that he was right.
But hitting is not the correct way to communicate your frustration with him.
You use your words.
You communicate.
We don't hit.
We use our words.
That's the refrain I use.
Remember, you're talking about three and four year old kids.
You can't get into some academic dissertation about the differences of this and that.
It has to be very simple.
They have to be able to understand it.
So, that's the simple explanation.
I also say that hitting is wrong because it hurts people.
And we don't hurt people.
Again, simple.
A three-year-old can understand it.
Which is important, because I'm saying it to a three-year-old, so they should be able to understand it.
Now, here's the issue.
The reason that I've given, use your words, don't hurt people, this reason would seem very much to apply to spanking.
It would seem that as the spanking parent, I am not using my words, and I am hurting the child.
Maybe not hurting him very much, but when a child hits another child, it doesn't hurt very much either.
When my daughter slaps her brother or something, it doesn't hurt hardly at all.
But that's not the point.
It's not about the degree of injury.
It's just it does hurt a little bit, and we don't do that to people.
And spanking does hurt at least a little bit.
Otherwise, why are you doing it?
And even if you use your words before and after spanking, it still seems like you are trying to communicate with violence, with hitting, rather than with your words.
And so, at least from the child's perspective, it is going to seem very much like a double standard.
And so that's something you have to take into account.
Is the spanking so important to you?
Is the plus side so much of a plus that it can outweigh the appearance of a double standard when it comes to violence?
Now, I argue that it doesn't just appear to be a double standard.
I think it actually is a double standard.
But my point is, the most you can do is say, oh, it only appears to be one.
Well, I would say even that, though, Even if it's only the appearance of, it's still a problem.
Okay, then you say spanking isn't hitting.
You provide a definition.
You say the definition to strike with the open hand, etc.
Well, Joel, what's the definition of strike?
I'll tell you.
Dictionary.
To deal a blow or stroke to a person or thing, semicolon, hit.
So, strike is hit.
So the definition of spanking is to hit with the open hand.
Spanking is hitting.
Obviously.
It is impossible to spank a child without hitting them.
Unless you're a Jedi using the Force.
Here's the distinction.
All spanking is hitting.
Not all hitting is spanking.
So there's a lot of very violent and abusive forms of hitting.
Spanking may not be one of those forms, but it is a form of hitting.
That's undeniable.
Just as all bourbon is whiskey, not all whiskey is bourbon.
Jupiter is a planet, not all planets are Jupiter, right?
Spanking is a subset of a category which is hitting.
The category is hitting.
It is a subset of that, so it is hitting.
And this means it is perfectly accurate to say that when you spank your child, you hit them.
That is perfectly accurate.
You are hitting your child.
Yes, there is no denying that.
You can't deny it.
It's in the definition you provided.
My point is, if it makes you super uncomfortable to think of spanking as hitting, if it makes you angry when someone says that you hit your child, then maybe that's a hint that you shouldn't be doing it.
If you need the euphemism, then maybe that should tell you something.
And it's not like I've found some absurd roundabout way of describing spanking to make it sound bad.
I had some people say that, oh, you could describe any punishment and make it sound bad.
Putting someone in timeout is imprisonment, right?
Okay, but that's not what I'm doing with spanking.
I'm not finding some roundabout, elaborate, absurd way of describing it.
I'm just defining it.
There is no way to define the word spank without the word hit or a synonym.
So spank is just a euphemism.
It's just a word that means exactly the same thing.
And so what I'm saying is if the definition of it makes you uncomfortable, Maybe that should tell you something.
You say, what about shouting?
Yes, I think shouting and screaming at a kid in anger is bad.
We shouldn't do it.
I've done it.
We shouldn't do it.
I agree.
We shouldn't do it.
Of course, there are extreme cases.
You shout, hey, don't run in the road kind of thing.
For the most part, shouting and screaming in anger.
You are venting your frustrations at your child, or about your child, or at least in front of your child.
And you shouldn't be doing any of those.
I do it.
I have done it.
I shouldn't, you know?
My point here has never been that I'm the perfect parent.
That is not my point.
And then you bring up the Bible.
What does the Bible say?
Well, what does the Bible say about disciplining children?
Well, here's what Proverbs says, okay?
Says, withhold not correction from the child.
If thou beatest him with a rod, he shall not die.
Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.
Okay, Joel, let me ask you.
Do you beat your kid with a rod?
Do you?
If you don't, and I understand what the Bible says, but I hope you don't, beat him with a rod.
I mean, what if, do you beat your kid with a rod, and what would you say if You know, one of your kids' friends came over, and they had welts on them.
And you asked them where the welts came from, and they told you that they were being beaten with a rod by their parents.
And don't tell me that beating with a rod doesn't make welts.
It does.
And there's no way to beat with a rod that doesn't cause bruises.
It just doesn't.
You can't.
What would you say?
Would you say, oh, that's biblical, that's nice?
Or would you potentially call the police?
So here's my point.
If you're not beating with a rod, and if you, in fact, would be horrified by a parent who beat their three-year-old with a rod, then you are not taking Proverbs as a literal step-by-step guide for parenting in the modern age.
You are not doing that.
Now, I admit that I'm not.
If your accusation to me is that I am not, you know, I am not Literally following Proverbs, the Old Testament, as a guide for disciplining my children.
You're right, I'm not.
But neither are you.
And if you want to say that I'm, you know, cherry-picking, maybe I am, but you're cherry-picking within the verse itself, which seems a lot more arbitrary.
Now it's one thing to look at the entire verse and say, you know, I think this must be non-literal, there must be some metaphor here because I just, you know, I can't square the idea of beating my child with a rod.
I'm not going to do it.
No way.
My conscience just will not allow that.
So it's one thing to say that, which is what I'm saying.
But what you're doing is you're picking apart the sentence itself and cherry-picking certain words.
And, you know, you like this, you don't like that, I don't like rod, so I'll make rod metaphorical.
Beating, I don't want to call it beating, I like spanking.
That to me seems a hell of a lot more arbitrary than what I'm doing.
And I admit that even what I'm doing is It's a little arbitrary.
I do admit that because the main reason why I'm going to look at that verse as metaphor or non-literal, it's not because of the context of the verse or because of my understanding of the original Hebrew or anything like that.
It's just because it strikes me as barbaric to beat a child with a rod.
Okay?
That's my reasoning.
But, again, my point is you have the same reasoning unless you are actually beating your child with a rod, and I hope you don't.
Because I think that's abuse, yes.
So, what do I do with that verse?
As I said, I take it as non-literal.
I think you do.
I think almost everybody does.
Okay, so those were your points.
A few other points in summary as we wrap up.
I do think it's relevant that nearly all the research I've ever read on this subject has come down against it.
Research shows that spanking is highly predictive of violent behavior, antisocial behavior, aggression, mental health problems, negative relationships with parents down the line.
It shows that it's predictive even of neurological changes in the brain.
When I say predictive, I don't mean causal.
We cannot prove the causal relationship that's true, but you can see high degrees of correlation And you could say all day that correlation doesn't equal causation, that's true, but it can be indicative of causation.
And so there's a lot of very good reason to think that the correlation here is indicative of causation.
That's why the Academy of Pediatrics, for example, 67,000 doctors, came out against spanking, said it's ineffective and harmful.
I'm not saying their word is gospel, I'm not saying that, but you talk about your experience with your child.
Okay, but however well-behaved your child is, and I'll take you at your word that he's well-behaved, but how do you know he'd be worse if you didn't spank?
Unless you've been conducting parental experiments on your own child.
That's the problem with basing this on personal anecdotes.
It's better to look at the broader picture, the large picture, not just personally reported data of parents who are looking to justify their own decisions.
And if you look at the big picture, and the research that's done, almost all of it, Really, almost all of it that I've ever read, and you go look at it yourself, has concluded nearly definitively that spanking is harmful.
And the few outlier studies that I've read, for the most part, at best find that maybe it won't be harmful.
But there has been almost nothing finding a positive correlation.
Does that settle it?
No.
But it is a compelling piece of evidence, isn't it?
I mean, if you're told that a certain form of discipline you're using with your child, that there's volumes of research done about it, and almost all of that research has found that it's harmful, shouldn't that cause you to at least pause and think, you know, maybe there's a problem here?
I don't understand how you could just wave it off.
That I don't understand, how anyone could do that.
I couldn't.
That's why I don't spank, because I have read about it, and the more I've read about it, especially recently, I have found it very persuasive.
I have no reason to doubt it other than... I would prefer if it weren't true, but that's not good enough.
And I think that throws the ball back in your court, considering all the research on this, considering the possibility That you at least might undermine your authority by seeming to contradict yourself, considering your own discomfort with spanking when it is defined in literal terms, considering the risks involved in using this kind of disciplinary method, considering the ethical difficulties that are always going to be inherent any time an adult uses punitive physical force on a small child, considering the possibility that even if it works, it might only work by instilling fear in your child rather than respect and love,
Considering that many established links have been found between spanking and future aggression, considering all of this, why do it?
What's the risk of not doing it?
What's the positive case for it?
Can you launch a positive case that outweighs all of the things I just mentioned?
I don't think you can.
So, you know, I'm trying to justify my position.
I would say positively justify yours.
Tell me why you should do it.
Why is it better?
What reason do you have to think that it's actually better than the alternative?
Aside from your kids are turning out okay.
That's not good enough.
My kids are turning out okay, too, and I don't spank.
And I've got four of them.
I don't know how many you have.
But, you know, we don't want to get into this personal back and forth.
That's not what it's about.
So, there it is.
That's my whole case.
But, I reiterate for the tenth time, because a lot of people seem to be confused on this point about what my personal feelings are, I do not believe or feel that parents who spank are bad parents, or anything close to it.
I simply disagree with the method, and these are My reasons.
All right.
Have a great weekend, everyone.
Godspeed.
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