Spanking

Yglesias ran a column last week about "values." His basic idea - which I agree with - is that Democrats should talk more about values than policy. Voters who are not already partisan tend to think politicians are liars, which wasn't really true until Trump came along. But policy is boring and it's been hard to find a lot of examples of how policy has impacted lives positively recently.

So, yes, Democrats should talk about values like democracy, freedom, tolerance and so on. Needless to say, it wouldn't be an Yglesias column without punching some college educated activists. One area where he does admit some problems is an interesting one that comes up more frequently in identifying partisan psychological traits: spanking.

The strongest support for spanking roughly falls into two broad opposed groups: African Americans and Republicans. What's more, support for spanking correlates to support for authoritarian sentiments. This does not follow through with Black voters, but spanking is fundamentally about parental authority, and patrimonial politics is about strong man authority, so it makes sense.

I live in a very Trumpy town, and last night we had a thing where they close of Main street and bring in food trucks and  - I swear to Dog - an Elvis impersonator. As we were sitting there eating our shitty food truck food, some kids rode by on bikes and some guy barked at them. Now, I don't know if he was related to them, but the kids seemed surprised that this guy was talking to them. Should they have been riding their bikes? No! It was crowded.

However, the guy said, "If I catch those kids on their bikes again, I'm going to take them from them."

Let's operate from the assumption that he wasn't their dad, but that he saw kids doing stupid kid things, told them to stop and then got significantly pissed when his authority wasn't being respected. So he was going to basically take this kids off their own bikes.

Early in my teaching career, I likely would have agreed with this (youngish) man. A bit of age and wisdom (and being a Father of the Year, I have the mug) means that I understand how pointless this exercise is. But I also would be willing to wager that he had a similar interaction with an adult when he was a child. 

The argument against spanking is that it merely enforces authority without teaching good behavior. I do think that consequences for bad actions, including punitive ones, can stop bad behavior. It cannot, however, create good behavior.

So, if you snatch a kid off his bike, you will likely implant a strong message against riding a bike through a crowd. You won't be able to teach him why it's bad, though. About why we owe others courtesy and consideration in shared spaces. So, the kid might not ride his bike through a crowd, but he will engage in some other form of behavior that is similarly reckless.

I see it all the time on our town's Facebook page. Adults just ripping into kids for vandalism or riding ATVs in the streets at weird hours.

Here's the thing, I guarantee that they did the same stupid things when they were kids. 

Now that they are adults, they expect to be respected, because they are adults. But they didn't respect adults when THEY were kids...because they were kids.

A slight majority of Americans support spanking, including bare majorities of women. This is not a "value" that Democrats can run on, but it represents a problem for American political culture. Spanking or other forms of corporal punishment don't have to be outlawed, and doing so would be a political malpractice. 

We do need to get to a country where support for spanking declines, I just don't know how.