A woman, a dog, and a walnut tree -
The more you beat them, the better they be.
Old proverb.
Regardless of your position on the beating of women, and I am not saying it's for or against, we can certainly both agree that beating dogs is not a Good Thing. From what I was reading about corporal punishment in children, people have a tendency to rationalize that the way it's always been is the way it should be. But we seem to have outgrown beating dogs and women.
It is possible that we, as a culture, may someday decide that corporal punishment of children is not a Good Thing. We can certainly all agree that there is a line which, if crossed, is child abuse. We just don't agree about where to draw the line.
We can also agree, I think, that there are households which are violent, and chaotic, where abuse is more likely. It's easy to see that this is not a Good Thing. We don't like to think about the upright, respectable family man who is a sadist to his wife and children behind closed doors. (Or woman, of course) That closet sadist wants desperately to be able to keep his sadism in the closet. Perhaps he even denies it to himself. That's the guy I worry about. People who prevaricate, and rationalize, and twist, and distort, and evade, in an effort to maintain that respectable facade, even to themselves. Their "only one swat on the diaper" is as false as the "couple of beers" that the drunk driver will admit to.
Petty cruelty that never ends can be incredibly destructive. |
